The Perennials I: Eve of the Eternal
by Skaldic Oresteia
Summary: Nobody is there to catch Rose Tyler when she falls, and nothing can survive the Void. Two years later, disaster strikes again at Torchwood Tower, and the Doctor, Martha, Jack, Donna, and the Torchwood Team find themselves desperately trying to protect humanity as a sinister plot unfolds, the wrath of an old enemy who is out for revenge.
1. Prologue: Junctions

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 ** _A/N: Welcome back to the universe of The Perennials! This is a series of stories I used to post under the name "Ancalagar the Dragon Lord," but undergoing an extensive revision. Unlike the last major revision, this one has some significant changes to the plot and is considerably longer. For the first part of the revision, I merged "Eve of the Eternal" with a later story which I used to call "Retribution." It will be considerably more action-packed than it originally was. A lot more will be at stake this time._**

 ** _Update : I've made some modifications and corrections in the prologue through Chapter Four. Will provide relevant commentary for each chapter._ **

* * *

**Prologue**  
 **Junctions**

* * *

"Gallifrey didn't fall?" The Eleventh Doctor's face broke out in amazed joy. "It worked? It's still out there?"

The Curator's already failing hearts nearly broke at the hope in his voice, but laying aside timelines, he couldn't ruin that hope as soon as it had started. "I'm only a humble curator, I'm sure _I_ wouldn't know," he replied, shrugging.

"Then where is it?" his much younger self asked.

"Where is it indeed?" the Curator answered. "Lost. Shh!" He cut off the Eleventh Doctor's response. Then, taking a deep breath, he whispered, "Perhaps… Things do get lost, you know." He swallowed as a terrible ache throbbed in his chest, and he leaned more heavily on his cane, bloody thing. But he didn't want to revisit yet another old favourite, not yet, not in front of his younger self. Needing to get away soon, he said, "And now, you must excuse me." Seeing the continued hope and happiness in Eleven's face, he sighed, "Oh… you have a lot to do."

He started to turn away, but Eleven eagerly asked, "Do I? Is that what I'm supposed to do now? Go looking for Gallifrey?"

Looking back, the Curator told him, "That's entirely up to you. Your choice, eh? I can only tell you what I would do. If I were you… oh, if I were you…" His voice broke for a moment, as he looked as his past self, so much younger, a formerly bitter incarnation now full of so much hope, the sight of which nearly brought tears to his eyes. Instead, he forced himself to chuckle. "Perhaps I was you, of course. Or perhaps you are me." He reached out and shook his younger self's hand. A paradox of sorts, but then again, Time Lord…. He kept a note of good humour in his chuckling, but couldn't help but choke out a subtly embittered, "Congratulations."

The Eleventh Doctor didn't catch onto this, simply laughing, "Thank you very much."

The Curator looked back at him, "Or perhaps it doesn't matter either way. Who knows?" He laid his hand across his chin in a thoughtful expression, remembering this exact moment, remembering that he, Eleven, wouldn't and couldn't understand just yet. Then his hearts gave another painful throb, and recognizing that it was time to go, he emphasized, " _Who knows?"_

Then he turned around and began to walk away, using much of his remaining energy to ignore his aching joints and his protesting hearts, determined to walk normally, to give the younger Doctor no hint (though, in retrospect, it should have been obvious), of what he was witnessing.

As the Curator turned a corner, he heard the engines of a Tardis from ages past rev up, and then slowly fade away, a sound that was as much a part of his life as he was himself, and then he felt a tear escape his eye, when nobody was watching. He then walked down another hallway and stopped in front of an office, which remained locked when he was working. The Curator reached into his pocket and withdrew a card key with his shaking hands, and clumsily swiped it in the lock, which gave an audible click, and he swung the door open.

There, deep within the headquarters of UNIT, stood the Tardis, which, like him, was showing signs of decay, its doors remaining open for him, so he wouldn't continually have to unlock it with his arthritic fingers. _Stupid, useless, aging body,_ he cursed inwardly; but it was a fate all Time Lords eventually had to face, once their regenerative abilities were spent. He was not immortal, and never had been.

He hobbled inside the Tardis, and this time he closed the door knowing it would never open again, not by his doing. He slowly locked it, finalizing this reality. Like him, the Tardis was shedding its many forms, regressing, though it didn't really have to. Perhaps she, the old, kind girl, his only constant companion in this long journey of his life, merely wished to show him solidarity, spending her last gasp of energy on this. He couldn't help but be touched, but seeing her stuck in the particular form that his Tenth self inadvertently blew up in an unusually violent regeneration, with her lights dimmed, and nothing but the faintest blue glow in the Time Rotor, hurt him as much as anything. She gave a small, mournful hum as he looked up at the Rotor, leaning against the console.

"That's that, then," he sighed, feeling the finality of it. Even as he spoke, he felt his fourth face melt away, and he looked down at the mirror he had placed on one of the console panels. _Third_. Regressing. It was why he had to get away quickly… what he meant by revisiting the old favourites. A last process that Time Lords went through when they reached the end of their last regeneration. And yet it was different, because even the once younger-looking faces looked aged. It was especially odd seeing his tenth face, when he regressed to that, which looked similar to what the Master had once aged it into.

Were he not already regressing, he thought that the heartbreak as he watched his tenth, eleventh, and warrior forms discuss the fate of Gallifrey, and their hope that it had been saved… he thought the heartbreak might undo him then and there. And it had been saved, yet, in the very end, their hope had come to nothing. But he held in his despair, because he remembered what he had to do, his last task. Tie the last loose end, and remember…

His war form, doing all he could to do what was right, even though such a decision was hell to consider, let alone implement. But he was, perhaps, the greatest and bravest of all his many forms. Poor soul, making the decisions that had to be made for the sake of creation itself…

His eleventh form, full of bitterness and cynicism, who had faced his own potential death at Trenzalore, and won, but nearly losing Clara in the process… who had to endure the deaths of the Ponds, and who fulfilled a strange destiny with River Song (one that, in retrospect, the Curator now found a rather bizarre story, even for him). But all his companions' journeys eventually came to an end.

His tenth form, the incarnation with so much regret and sadness welling in his hearts that the Curator couldn't bring himself to face him, knowing what would become of him. The Tenth Doctor had tried so hard to do what was right, making self-sacrificing decisions, yet always losing, even those who promised to stick by him. Martha, who left of her own accord, had the best of the deal, and he even considered going to visit her once before he died… but then he realized that he'd already done so, and he wouldn't do that to her again. Donna, who had perhaps the worst fate of any of his companions, who, in order to live, had to forget all she had become. For a shining moment, Donna Noble went from having the lowest self-esteem of any of his companions, to the most confident and self-assured of them, and though it had nearly destroyed him to do so, he was forced to take that from her. And Rose… dear Rose… one of the companions who had meant the most to him, because she had saved him from himself, his grief-stricken ninth self, so soon after the Time War; the extraordinary Earth girl who swallowed time itself to save him; yet he never learned how it ended for her; he could only hope, and it was entirely his fault that he could only hope; but he'd had to break her heart for a future that he would never witness, and could only hope for.

They all left him in the end, always to a scene so much like this one, and the Curator swallowed back a bitter sob. Looking up at the glass column in the centre of the console room, he choked out, "What hurts me the most, though, at this moment, is the fact that most of my life looked like this exact scene, alone in the Tardis, always wandering but going nowhere, always returning to the exact same point." He leaned heavily on his cane, and then turned around, looking around the room, wishing with all his hearts that _someone_ could be there with him… but they all left him in the end, and this was his end.

Even as he watched, his third face faded from view. _Second._ It wouldn't be long now.

"Funny," he remarked, whether to himself or to the Tardis even he didn't know. "Most of my life looked exactly like this. I was always wandering but going nowhere, always returning here, alone."

The Tardis could only give a quiet hum in response, but he could feel her sorrow.

He thought about his many companions again, and then remarked stoically, "Humans can live life to its fullest in a short hundred years, but I can't even live _my_ life that fully in a few thousand." His voice grew bitter again. "How did that happen, eh?"

His angry tears fell upon the Time Rotor. _I don't want to go._ The last words of his tenth form echoed back to him, and welled within his heart, stronger than ever. His knees buckled beneath him, and he slid to the floor, sobbing, haunted by all that he had gone through, and all he wished he had gone through. His cane clattered away, and then, unsure of how long he'd sat there, he felt his second face regress again. _First._

His first and last form. How fitting.

He could feel his last reserves of energy start to leave him, and he looked up, thinking about his eleventh form, the last man he spoke to before this.

"But we tried to save it, didn't we?" he pled to no one. "Isn't that what counts?"

Then he heard it, a light step on the grating of the Tardis, and he looked aside to see a young woman standing before him, a golden-haired girl with an ethereal glow around her. His mouth fell open in surprise, but besides that, he didn't move, and he said nothing.

"Why should you be so surprised to see me?" the girl asked. "You saved Gallifrey. Gallifrey didn't fall, so the Moment wasn't destroyed."

The Doctor stared at her for a moment, and then it all came back to him, memories long suppressed. _Oh, Bad Wolf girl, I could kiss you!_

Only this time, he remembered _her_ voice deadpan, _"Yeah, that's gonna happen."_

"No," he whispered. "I remember now. I remember you." She sat down beside him, a strange smile spanning across her face as she looked at him. "I didn't save Gallifrey," he remarked. "You did."

The Moment shook her head. "The Time War ends," she observed, and a gold glow appeared in her eyes for the briefest moment, one he recognized from ages past, the Earth girl who swallowed time itself.

"Tell me," he asked quietly, "why did you take that form?"

The Moment looked somewhat confused by the question. "I chose a form from your past, especially for you," she told him again.

"No." The Doctor tried to force himself in a more upright position. "Why did you take _that_ form? Why did you choose to take the likeness of Rose Tyler?"

"I took the form of Bad Wolf," the Moment corrected him.

The Doctor shook his head. "Bad Wolf _is_ Rose Tyler," he retorted.

She raised an eyebrow, and commented, "I'm glad to see you've finally acknowledged that."

The Doctor looked away from her at that, guilt bubbling in his dying hearts. Why here? Why now?

Angrily, he bit out, "Rose Tyler is from my past, yes, but she is a _thing_ of my past. She's not part of my life anymore. She hasn't been for a very, very long time."

The Moment looked neither cowed nor apologetic as she stepped in front of him. She crouched down, and the took his hand. A strange burning but painless sensation, an invigorating sensation, coursed through his arm and then his body, and he looked up and saw that her eyes were glowing bright gold. Then, to his shock, she pulled him to his feet, and he found himself with the strength to remain standing, his cane forgotten on the floor.

The Moment then released him, and asked in a stern voice, "Why should you be so upset to see me in her form? But you need not answer that. I hear you. I know what's inside your head, and you're afraid to look Rose Tyler in the eye. Why is that?" She held his gaze, the glow in her eyes fading, but in that moment he couldn't look away. "Why should you feel guilty about Rose Tyler?" she asked in an eerily gentle voice. "You did what you thought was best for her, did you not?"

His frown deepened.

"Looking out for her, yet pushing her away, making sure she couldn't get too close…"

"Stop it," he bit out.

"…afraid of what would become of you if you gave her your hearts, only to watch as she withered away before you…"

"Stop it," he pled.

The gentleness faded, leaving a merciless glint in her golden eyes. "…making decisions that were rightfully hers…."

"STOP IT!" the Doctor shouted, now that his newfound energy permitted him to. "Have you come here, on the last day of my life, only to taunt me with my mistakes?"

The Moment didn't so much as flinch. Instead, she merely tilted her head, her expression thoughtful. "You know, in a way, I truly am Bad Wolf, the very same entity pushing myself into the interface of the most powerful weapon ever created. I saved Gallifrey, I ended the Time War, and to finish the job I saved you."

The Doctor's guilt ebbed away, forced out by an equally powerful emotion: for the first time in many years, he felt fear.

"You're projecting yourself from the very moment Rose first absorbed the Time Vortex," he realized in disbelief. "You're still spreading that message, after all this time."

Bad Wolf's eyes glowed again. "I _never_ stop spreading that message," she told him firmly.

The Doctor felt his limbs begin to shake, but it wasn't from his frailty. "What do you want with me?" he asked, his voice quivering.

Bad Wolf continued to scrutinize him. The glow faded from her eyes, leaving an expression of almost child-like curiosity. "Look at you," she said coolly, "no longer the last of the Time Lords, the man who saved and restored Gallifrey, the man who survived Trenzalore and crossed all the universe just to run as he always had from the moment he looked into the Untempered Schism so long ago, running, running, running, always running from who you are…"

The Doctor's eyes widened in astonishment. She had him pegged, where no one else had. "How could you know that?" he whispered as another word, another name, rose to the forefront of his mind to haunt him.

"Because I _hear_ you," Bad Wolf told him impatiently. "I hear your deepest thoughts. I know who you are, and yet here you are, dying alone, an old man filled with regret."

The Doctor sighed. "I was never meant for a happy life," he told her miserably. "If you know who I am, then you know that more than anyone."

"Not so. Do not forget, I am the Moment," she told him gently. "I am the most powerful weapon in the universe. And I am Bad Wolf, the Time Keeper. I see the whole of time and space, and I know that this was not set in stone, not for a single second."

 _Like that matters now._ "There was only ever one thing set in stone for me," he retorted, scowling.

The impatience returned to Bad Wolf's eyes. "How differently would you think if you know about _her_?"

"What do you mean?"

"Rose Tyler," she clarified. "The very thing you were most afraid of at one time, the possibility of watching what would become of her. Shall I tell you?"

Fear returned to his hearts again, and he shook his head fervently. "Don't. I don't want to know."

Bad Wolf ignored his plea completely. "Oh, her future was never set in stone either. There really isn't such a thing as fate—not until you reach it, anyway—but with Rose Tyler there were any number of ways her life could have turned out differently." A stoic expression now filled her eyes. "But after she disappeared into the parallel world the second time, there was an infinity of courses her life could have taken. Unfortunately, the greater part of those timelines ended with her in much the same boat as you: dying an old woman filled with regret."

"What do you mean?" he asked, feeling the old guilt again.

"If you could do it all again, would you?" asked Bad Wolf.

"Sorry?"

"If you could live your life again, and change something to lead you somewhere else, would you?"

The Doctor thought about this. "That depends on where I would end up."

"And if it led you to a place you never thought you'd be, a place where you are at peace with yourself?"

"Of course I would change it," the Doctor told her quietly.

"Then why don't you?"

The Doctor stared at her, not expecting a question like that from the Bad Wolf, an entity born of time, the Time Keeper herself, and he feebly protested, "I can't afford to change my personal history. You know that. There are too many variables. They could lead to any direction."

Bad Wolf clambered back to her feet, and looked aside. He watched her, wondering what she was getting to, as she stared thoughtfully into nothingness. Then she looked back at him. A look of intense sadness appeared in her face, and then it was never more clear to the Doctor who Bad Wolf really was underneath it all, and when she spoke, she confirmed it. "I am also Rose Tyler. You said it yourself. Bad Wolf is Rose Tyler. You took the Time Vortex from her, but Bad Wolf never truly left her. Living in the parallel universe, living a normal life, wasn't bearable for her."

He swallowed, but was unable to say anything.

"Before she absorbed the Time Vortex," Bad Wolf continued, "it would have been. Being human, living as a human, was possible for Rose Tyler, but it wasn't possible for Bad Wolf, and Bad Wolf never left. I, she, was always meant to be something greater, and though she couldn't remember, she could sense it, even if you couldn't."

"What has she done?" he asked nervously.

"Usually nothing, and that's exactly the point." She sighed regretfully. "Your human counterpart really was there to help her temper the wolf inside her. Her relationship with him varied in the splintering timelines. Sometimes happy, sometimes neutral, sometimes going badly. No matter what happened, her life was imbued with regret. He regretted that _she_ had been likewise imprisoned, and _she_ regretted that she would never know if she actually chose him. Trapped in a world that was never meant to exist, they both longed to be part of something greater, something they both were meant to be."

Her words pricked the Doctor's conscience, and he choked out, "But she _did_ choose him."

"Because you made it impossible for her to do otherwise," Bad Wolf shot back, and for the first time, she looked angry. "' _Does it need saying?_ '" She snorted contemptuously. "You know that _that_ was nothing more than a backhanded way of telling her you were leaving her there whether she liked it or not, but that was rightly _her_ decision to make. But _you,_ the man who makes people _better_ , stole that decision from her and unjustly imprisoned her with the positively stupid excuse that your human counterpart needed her _supervision._ "

How desperately in that moment did the Doctor want to argue back, to defend his actions, to tell Bad Wolf that she was wrong. But her words ate at his heart, renewed his guilt, and for the first time since he'd left Rose he considered the possibility that he might have been wrong to imprison her there. Was he really the arrogant, cowardly hypocrite Bad Wolf was telling him he'd been? He didn't like to think it; but Bad Wolf was certainly right about one thing: Rose had done nothing to deserve her imprisonment.

"You chose him for her," Bad Wolf continued relentlessly, "and she had to live with that for the rest of her life, not knowing if he really was her choice. That is why she nearly always died in regret, Doctor just like you are now." She looked at him, both regretfully and accusingly, before she concluded, "So yes, you are right to feel guilty about her."

The Doctor lowered himself into his seat. Anger and frustration at himself and at Rose and at Bad Wolf welled within his hearts, and in a final effort to defend himself, he finally bit out, "Why torment me with this now, when there's nothing I can do to reverse it?"

The sadness disappeared from her eyes, and to his surprise she looked pleased that he asked. "I see everything," she reminded him. "All that is, all that was, all that ever could be, and all that ever could have been. There is one timeline, Doctor, that could have led you to a different ending, to your life ending in peace _without_ regrets, and that timeline begins with a single moment."

Confused, the Doctor thought back over their whole conversation, and then asked, "To do with Rose Tyler?"

Bad Wolf shook her head. "No, to do with Pete Tyler. The moment which would have changed everything had it gone differently." The golden glint reappeared in her eyes, and she told him firmly, "I know that moment. I am the Moment. And I can change it. So are you willing to do it?"

The Doctor could only stare at her.

"Are you willing to take that chance?" she asked him, her voice growing intense. "To make the one change that will completely pivot your timeline?"

"At what cost?" he asked.

"It will not be easy," she warned him. "There will be problems you never faced, trials that will either make or break you. You will suffer trauma of all calibres. You will feel heartbreak, grief, fear and uncertainty. Your most cherished beliefs will be challenged. You will be running a gauntlet, but if you run well, you will emerge with few regrets, stronger and better than you ever were in this fading timeline."

The Doctor looked away, thinking it over. It was, after all, very tempting. "A chance to do it all again…"

"To change your personal history."

"To run blindly into an unknown future."

She shrugged. "It's what you've always done. Your future was never set in stone."

"To take a leap of faith." He paused. "I'm not very good at that."

"I can do it," she repeated. "Are you willing to take that chance?"

Reality caught up with him then, and he looked back at her sadly. "It's a very tempting thought. But I can't… there are so many variables. If I were to take that chance, and it led me to something like this again, or worse, then what would have been the point of it all?"

This was it, the crux of the matter. Bad Wolf didn't look upset at his words, and she had a response to this. "Because if it works, then you will find the answer you've sought your whole life, the answer to that question, not merely _who_ you are, but _why_."

He gasped. No one, _no one_ , not River Song, not Sarah Jane Smith, not Clara, not Romana, not even Susan, had ever understood this. None of them had ever comprehended that his whole life he'd been running from an answer not to _who_ he was, but why he was what he was. That had always been a stunning and a frightening prospect. Looking back at Bad Wolf, he opened his mouth to speak, though he hardly knew what to say, but once again she cut him off.

"There is more to it than you know," she said, and in that moment the Doctor thought she'd never looked more stern or more serious than she did now. "I see _everything,_ including that which you cannot see, which not even the Time Lords ever saw. There's far more at stake than you _or_ Rose, things which I know but can't divulge."

"Can't, or won't?" he asked apprehensively.

"Can't because it would disrupt the causal nexus," she answered solemnly, "and won't because you're not ready." Her expression was adamant, and he knew he'd get little more from her. "Nonetheless, it has been happening right in front of you, right under your nose and you never saw it. The Convulsion is coming."

"Convulsion?" he repeated, perplexed. "I don't understand you. And I don't say that often."

Bad Wolf shook her head. "It _is_ coming, no matter what direction time takes. It's _outside_ time. It's beyond you, Doctor. It's unstoppable. All that's happened in this timeline was its delay. But there was one moment in your past which could change that"—

"And you're asking me to let you change it," he finished her statement.

She nodded. "What I'm asking of you will make it possible for the Convulsion to end, but only if that one moment, fixed on Pete Tyler, changes. I know that moment. The Moment is me. You have to decide."

The Doctor stared at her, wondering what she was talking about, and feeling a bit exasperated and resigned to the fact that she wasn't going to explain further. Still, it almost made him smile to think that an action committed by one human, Rose Tyler's father, would make all the difference to some cataclysm that even the Time Lords never saw coming. If it was inevitable in all time lines, then all his instincts screamed at him to do whatever it took to end it; and if his reward for doing so was to be at peace with himself, possibly even happy…

Could he do it? Cheat death once again for this one chance?

The Doctor drew a rattled breath, and then, making either the most courageous or most cowardly decision of his life, looked up at Bad Wolf. "It's selfish. It's wrong, and incalculably dangerous." She didn't look fazed by this, and the Doctor suspected that she knew what he was saying, and he continued, "But I'm dying, with a chance to live again. Who gets that?" He smiled at her. "Why not? But it's on your head."

The brilliant smile of Rose Tyler appeared on her face, and the golden glow about Bad Wolf strengthened, and her eyes glowed again. She reached out, and placed a hand on the Doctor's shoulder. In an instant, he felt the golden warmth spread throughout his body, filling him with new energy, new youth. A brightness filled his vision, blinding him, and he heard a powerful singing, the song of the universe, the Time Vortex, and the Tardis, which he'd only heard once before, on the very last day of the Time War… the day Rose saved him, and he sacrificed one of his lives to save her.

When it faded at last, he found himself looking at his own hands in a totally different room, arms wrapped in the sleeves of a pin-striped suit, hands gripping the black handle of a device emblazoned with the Torchwood insignia.

Horror filled the Doctor's hearts as he, restored to his tenth form, found himself in a white room, a terrible white glow emanating from the adjacent wall. Time was frozen, leaving him to look at a few immobile Daleks in mid-fall, and directly across from him, he could see Rose, also clinging to a black Magnaclamp, reaching in vain for a lever that had been knocked offline.

"No!" he yelled, even as Bad Wolf appeared before him, looking at the scene resignedly. "Nonononono!" He looked at her pleadingly. "Not this! Not here! Please, not this!"

Bad Wolf shook her head. Her earlier sadness returned to her eyes. "It's too late," she told him. "The change has been made. When I leave, you won't remember your past life."

"No!" Tears now stung his eyes, fearful, regretful, terror-stricken tears. "You said it yourself!" he shouted. "This moment is fixed on Pete Tyler! There is only one alternative!"

"I warned you that it wouldn't be easy," Bad Wolf coldly reminded him.

"Is that it, then?" the Tenth Doctor cried. "My life changes for the better if Rose Tyler dies? Because if that's the great secret, then I don't want it!"

Bad Wolf stepped before him, and her eyes narrowed. "That's it? Are you giving up already? You once took a leap of faith. You thought for certain Rose Tyler was going to die then too. I heard you." She looked at her other self, suspended in time, about to live her last moments. Without looking at the Doctor, she concluded, "But you _will_ survive the most courageous decision you've ever made, because if there's one thing you believe in, just one thing, you believe in _her_."

With that, Bad Wolf faded from before his eyes.

In that moment, all the Doctor's memories from this moment on, Rose's entrapment in the parallel world, his meeting with Donna, his travels with Martha, Jack's return, the Master's reappearance in his life, his travels with Donna, Rose's return, Davros and the Daleks, Rassilon's attempt to destroy time, his regeneration, and all that followed… all the memories, one by one, flashed before his eyes, and vanished.

Finally, his final meeting with Bad Wolf, and the very end of his life…

The Tenth Doctor blinked, and for a moment, he could have sworn that he saw the visage of Bad Wolf flicker in front of him, and vanish, and his mind returned to the present… _what just happened?_ It felt as though he'd lived whole lifetimes in a moment, but he couldn't remember…

Rose jumped from her Magnaclamp, and began reaching for the lever, and the Doctor watched in stupefied fascination, then horror as what he was seeing truly hit him.

"I've got to get it upright!" she told him. Then she forced the lever back in place. But of course, the moment she did, the Void's pull returned to its full strength, leaving Rose stranded, unable to return to her previous, safer position.

"Rose, hold on!" he cried out.

It was a useless shout, of course, but he couldn't help it. On average, the human hand could grip something for approximately two and a half to three minutes, before the tendons were forced to give way; but the Void was pulling on Rose, and her fingers were holding back her entire body-weight, which would cut that time by at least half, if not more. If it didn't close soon…

Even as he watched, he could tell that Rose was losing this battle, and he reached out vainly, and she looked at him miserably. Her expression was nearly his undoing, because he could see the hopelessness in her eyes, the knowledge and fear of what was about to happen, but more importantly, terrible regret that she could never fulfil her promise of forever… She was embracing her fate, and he was powerless to stop it.

Then, finally, after what seemed an eternity, she surrendered, and fell.

The Doctor screamed in anguish.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, he thought he could hear a wolf howling.

* * *

Wednesday is a central point in a cycle of human time-telling, named after Odin, the Norse god of victory and of death. Each week has a Wednesday, the year fifty-two, and wars an indefinite quantity. But this war had only one day, and that was Wednesday.

On this Wednesday

Adeola Oshodi met her cousins Martha and Leticia Jones for lunch. The hour following was enjoyable but perfectly ordinary. Adeola ordered a ham sandwich and a small salad. Martha opted for some soup. Tish gagged on a bitter piece of Gorgonzola cheese that wasn't supposed to be in her wrap. She also had overslept that day and was a bit grumpy because of it. A man sat nearby reading a newspaper: a British soldier had died in Baghdad; the new Harry Potter book had sold more copies in two weeks than _Gone with the Wind_ had in decades. A man named Harold Saxon had started a campaign for Prime Minister. The front page was ordinary, on a perfectly ordinary day.

Martha had found an internship at the Royal Hope Hospital, and would be working and training there for the next two semesters. Tish was about to apply for a job at a research laboratory. Adeola had just found a new boyfriend named Matt, but didn't say much about her new job. She simply told them that she was a secretary at Canary Wharf.

At ten past, they went their ways. The ghost shift would come on in ten minutes.

Adeola went back to work.

She and her boyfriend sneaked into the office renovations for a snog.

She never came home.

On this Wednesday

Yvonne Hartman watched excitedly as a blue box materialized before the soldiers in the storage unit. After more than one hundred and twenty years of study, tracking, and waiting, _he_ had come. Queen Victoria's institute had finally tracked down the Doctor, the enemy of the state, and it was under Yvonne's leadership. _If it's alien, it's ours._ Some would question her motives, but in time she and her colleagues and their predecessors would be viewed as heroes of the Second British Empire. After this day, those who threatened Earth, human or alien, would not dare to fight Torchwood One any longer. She waited with baited breath as the Tardis finally shifted into full view. It was August 8th, 2007. It was Torchwood's finest hour.

On this Wednesday

Jack Harkness monitored the energy readings of the Cardiff Time Rift, but something about the date bothered him, something that brought his mind back to the history textbooks of his home century, but he couldn't remember the significance of August 8th, 2007. He alone remained concerned about the ghosts pressing themselves into the world, but he had no evidence of their hostile intent, so he could only watch.

He shook his head absentmindedly. A few days earlier it was Hiroshima day; perhaps that was what he was thinking of. He remembered that day too. He would never forget this day.

A ghost appeared in the room.

It shifted into clearer focus. A metal hand suddenly grabbed Jack's shoulder, and he blacked out.

On this Wednesday his misgivings proved to be fatally correct. When Jack came to, all of his colleagues, except Suzie Costello, were dead.

On this Wednesday

On this sunny, summer day

On this bright, summer day, it was silent in London for the briefest moment, when smoke slowly rose into the air, carrying with it the ashes and blood of the dead, before the cries of terror and grief penetrated the shock of battle.

On this Wednesday, August 8th, 2007,  
Five million Cybermen invaded Earth.  
Twenty million Daleks escaped the Time War.  
Three hundred thousand humans died all across the world, and  
On this Wednesday, Rose Tyler fell into the Void.

* * *

 _A/N: I have made a few small changes in this chapter, mainly to the dialogue: Bad Wolf is a little harsher to the Doctor this time, and makes a few points I didn't have her make originally._


	2. Whispers from Elsewhere

_._

 _A/N: A few updates have been made to this chapter, but they mostly have to do with pacing._

 **Part One**  
 **Emergence**  
 **28 December 2009**

* * *

 **Chapter One**  
 **Whispers from Elsewhere**

London  
11:54 AM

The breach room was empty except for desks and equipment covered with plastic wrap. The lights were off leaving the room very dimly lit from emergency lights and daylight from the windows, which had been covered with a semi-transparent wrap; but even this provided little light owing to the snowstorm outside, nor insulation from the biting cold. Only the lack of gathered dust belied the surface appearance of disuse.

Arms folded, Aribo looked around the room. "Just as we left it," he observed in satisfaction.

"UNIT isn't any the wiser?" asked his companion.

"Pax, they'd have soldiers up here if they had any idea."

Pax too looked around the room, his expression unimpressed. "They have no subtlety. Primitive beasts."

Aribo ignored him. He stepped forward, took the wrapping off one of the desks and its accompanying chair, upon which he shed his white lab coat. Sitting, he expertly booted up the software and began pulling up a record. Pax, also dressed in a lab coat, seemingly took little interest in Aribo's activities. Instead he slowly moved towards the opposite wall, his eyes fixed upon it with a strange, cautious demeanour.

"It's getting stronger," Aribo told Pax firmly, his eyes fixed on the record. "The fluctuations reached a frequency of sixteen omicrons since last night."

"Rather a large jump," Pax remarked unconcernedly, his eyes still fixed on his object of interest. There was nothing unique about the wall; it was about fifteen feet fall and ten feet wide. It was plaster, painted white, supported with a steel frame like the rest of the tower. To any observer, it would look like a room in an abandoned building, or a room under renovation. But the moment Pax placed his hand on the wall, he shuddered. Even species with the most mundane minds would be unnerved by it.

"How soon before it starts affecting human technology?" he queried.

"How long before they notice, you mean?" asked Aribo. "Hard to say. If it goes by its usual pattern, a couple of days, perhaps? But if it continues accelerating, it could be hours. Maybe sooner."

Pax grimaced. "We will have to work quickly, then." As he spoke, he raised his left wrist and pulled his sleeve back, revealing a bracer with a metal panel. Pax opened it and raised it higher, and quietly said to it, "Hasdrubal, we have something to report."

* * *

Cardiff  
12:03 PM

The Rift Manipulator showed energy readings, but there were no blips, no unusual fluctuations, or significant changes since the night before. The long-range scans made a full survey of the surrounding exosphere and five astronomical units beyond, detecting nothing except for a few asteroids and a small comet moving past Mars. The SUV was clean and the Weevils had been fed. In short, Torchwood Three was experiencing the unthinkable: boredom.

Captain Jack Harkness walked out of his office to check the Rift Manipulator for the fourth or fifth time that day, to find Gwen Cooper by Toshiko Sato's old computer, dusting off the screen; with nothing else to do, she had spent the morning tidying up the Hub.

"Still no change?" he asked her, nodding at the now clean computer screens.

Gwen shook her head. "Everything's normal," she replied. Then considering her words, she amended, "Well, not so normal for us."

"Boring?"

"Yeah." Gwen sighed. "There's a big bag of rubbish in the front that I'll have to take out; there's gum on the floor by the Weevils. Janet's drooling all over her cell for some reason, and I think Ianto's doing inventory."

Jack grinned mischievously. "Love me enough to clear up my office?"

Gwen threw her dust rag at him. "Clean up your own stuff! I'm not your mother!"

"God forbid," Jack cheerfully responded.

"Besides, I really, really don't want to see what you've got in that den of yours. Not if the interactive smut I just found on this computer is any indication, and don't try to tell me Ianto downloaded it."

"Not my mother, my ass," Jack muttered, tossing the rag back. "But Gwen, what do you take me for?" he asked in a tone of mock hurt. When she rolled her eyes, he simply grinned and pulled what looked like a small blue crystalline sphere from his coat pocket. "At any rate, all you'd find in there right now are pieces of this."

Gwen looked at the object sceptically. "What is it, then?"

"It's a wave prism," Jack told her. "Used in sonic technology. Ianto found it last night in one of the back rooms. Apparently Alex Hopkins obtained it from Torchwood Four about fifteen years ago. Not sure what he wanted it for, as he left no record except the notice of delivery, but I'm trying to find a use for it."

"Well, at least _you've_ found a decent way to occupy your time." Gwen tossed the rag into a bin, and looked at her watch. "Anything else I can do?"

Jack shrugged. "Keep an eye on the police reports. It's been a while since we've had a good rogue Weevil. Or you could just head h"—

He stopped. Gwen heard it too, a quiet beeping from the Rift Monitor. They glanced at each other, and quickly ran over to look at its readings. It showed a noticeable fluctuation in the Rift's energy output. Usually all Gwen could ever discern from the monitor were energy spikes, but little as the monitor's numbers meant to her, even she knew that the appearance of a second energy reading in yellow rather than the normal blue, and divergent from the blue reading, was far from normal.

Bemused, Jack said quietly, "That isn't right? That's very _not_ right."

"What is that?" asked Gwen. "A different wavelength?"

"Yeah, recorded on a program that was installed two years ago. It hasn't picked up anything since…"

Jack's voice trailed away. Gwen looked at him, waiting. Jack's expression went from bemusement to some alarm, and he snapped into action, typing rapidly at the computer with a strange urgency that Gwen didn't like.

* * *

Pax continued listening to his communicator as a barely audible voice whispered instructions. The other paid little attention, entirely concerned with the readings on his monitor.

"Aribo," Pax barked, "describe the oscillations." He raised his communicator. "They can hear you."

Aribo glanced at the communicator, and then returned his attention to his monitor. "Well, the timing seems to be irregular, but the emissions are gathering in intensity. For the past couple of days they have built up at a rate of two or three omicrons every few hours, but last night, it jumped sixteen. Soon it will start interfering with radio waves. The humans are going to notice."

The speaker on the other end responded, his voice inaudible to Aribo but perfectly to Pax. The latter listened intently, only giving nods and yes-sirs, but once again Aribo, seemingly unconcerned, continued studying the recorded wavelengths on his monitor. Unconcerned, that is, until Pax next spoke.

"Can the old rupture be opened?" asked Pax.

Aribo looked up from his computer sharply. "I beg your pardon?" he asked, astonished.

"You heard me," growled Pax. "Can it be reopened?"

Aribo hesitated. "Yes, it can. At any time, in fact."

In spite of his affirmative, Aribo looked nervous and even somewhat appalled. Pax ignored this and returned to his communicator. "Confirmed," he told the other end. "So… I assume this is why you gave me this thing before we left?"

As he spoke, he drew something from his pocket, a hand-held, rectangular device Aribo didn't recognize, or rather, thought he recognized bout hoped to be wrong.

"Very well," Pax said into the communicator. "I'll inform you of our findings shortly."

He snapped the panel on the bracer shut. Aribo, warily pointing at the device in Pax's hands, asked, "What is that?"

"A space-time disrupter," Pax replied, untroubled.

"You're not actually going to open it?" cried Aribo in disbelief.

Pax pulled out a probe and switched it on, pointing it at the disrupter. There was a small clock, and a winding sound, as he adjusted the device's settings.

"No," he finally answered. Just as Pax began to relax, however, he amended, "Not yet. But for now, let's just see how deep this disturbance is, and if we can find out what's causing it."

* * *

With the Christmas holidays came a week of thick, grey cloud cover and snow, but while the holidays came to an end, the snowfall did not abate. When the residents of London woke that morning, they found it very cold outside and little snow, but by noon, the few solitary snowflakes turned into a heavy snowfall, and the temperature had drastically dropped. Out in the city, people wandered through the slush accumulating on the sidewalks, still damp from road salt, to their respective business.

Dr. Martha Jones was among them, bundled up in a heavy coat and scarf, but she still shivered violently. She drew her hood up tighter and pulled her scarf over her nose to try to ease the uncomfortable sensation in her nostrils every time she inhaled. This did her some good, until a misstep caused her to step into a slush puddle; she gasped as the frigid water seeped into her shoe, soaking her socks. Just as she was considering calling Tish and cancelling, however, she spotted the café a few paces away, and hurried past a Tesco's, hastily opening the door and running inside.

A blonde girl standing behind the counter looked up as Martha started wiping her feet on the mat by the door. As soon as Martha moved to a table by the window and lowered herself into a chair, the waitress got up from her seat and approached her, handing her a menu. "Welcome to the Wall."

"Thank you." Martha looked up at her. "Can I have two?"

"Meeting up with someone?" the girl asked.

"My sister," Martha told her. "She should be here soon."

The waitress handed her another menu, and then retreated to the counter. Martha bent down and took off her waterlogged shoe, trying to drain it a little. A janitor came from a back room with a bucket and began mopping up the dirty, wet shoeprints people had left on the floor, grumbling to himself as he worked. Martha picked up the menu and began looking it over, deciding that she might as well at least decide what she wanted while her sister was still on her way. It didn't take her long to decide on something, as there wasn't much to choose from, and that done, she put the paper down and waited.

After five minutes, Tish still hadn't arrived. To pass the time, Martha had turned her attention to the TV on the wall opposite, where the weatherman gave his report, predicting that the temperature would probably drop as low as -15 by the evening.

"No kidding," she heard the waitress say to the janitor. "At least it'll probably be too cold for people to trail slush in, Ted."

"Oh really?" the janitor said snidely. "Doesn't help me now, though, does it?"

"Don't give me that lip," the girl snapped back. "It's what you're paid for. _You_ applied for this job, so stop complaining."

As Ted retorted back, Martha checked her watch impatiently. When she'd gone on her lunch break, she hadn't imagined sitting by herself in a café with wet, freezing feet, watching the BBC and trying to tune out the employees' argument. Ted wrung out his mop, and then rolled his things over to the back, only to hear the bell ring again as somebody else entered the café, leaving more dirty footprints. Martha smirked and looked back to the news to hide her amusement. The reporters were now talking about the economy. They were just going over the latest reports of the recession in America, when Martha's phone rang, and she quickly answered.

"Jones," she said automatically.

"Sorry, Martha," Tish immediately answered. "I'm stuck in traffic. Everyone's going slow. You can barely see where you're going."

"That's fine," Martha answered, though she looked at her watch again in concern. "Are you going to get here in time? Or should I just go ahead and order?"

"I'll be about two minutes away once I get through this one street," Tish promised. "Tell you what, why don't you…"

The phone suddenly went silent. Martha frowned. "Tish?"

There was no response, but at that second the TV went static, and the lights flickered. The waitress, talking to the newcomer, glanced upwards. After two years working at UNIT, however, Martha was alert to any disruption, large or small, and also looked at the ceiling lamps with a frown. Her job required such alertness, even if her reason was telling her that it probably was just a problem with the power lines.

"Tish?" she tried again, and looked at her phone to examine the signal, but it seemed to be in place, and she still seemed to be connected. Martha frowned, and pressed the phone back to her ear, but she could only hear white noise, similar to the sound on the TV. Just as she was about to hang up and call Tish back, however, the white noise faded. Then she could have sworn she heard a distorted voice whisper, _"Watson, come here. I need you. Watson, come here. I need you. Doctor, come here, I need you. Watson, come here. I need you. Watson, come here. I need you."_ Martha looked at her phone in confusion, then pressed it to her ear again, but the phrase kept repeating.

Shaking her head, Martha moved her thumb to disconnect Tish's call, but then something moved in the corner of her eye, and she looked at the TV. She abruptly straightened with a trained, circumspect instinct. There was an outline, a blurred shape coming into view through the static, but though it was indistinct, Martha could see that it was humanoid, and she could have sworn that it seemed to be watching her. She swallowed. It reminded her of the Canary Wharf ghosts.

The voice on her phone turned to a distorted, gravelly female voice: _"This is the dead land, where the perpetual rose, the fading amaranth both bloom like the hopes of empty men. How much longer must I endure this barren gulf?"_

"Martha?" Tish's voice suddenly broke through, and Martha started. The static on the TV cleared up, and the image vanished. "Martha, are you still there?"

"Tish, did you hear that?" she asked, unnerved.

"Hear what? You all right?" Tish sounded confused. "Your phone did go static a second ago. Was that it?

"Yeah," Martha breathed. "Just that. And something went wrong with the lights."

She heard Tish sigh. "That job of yours has got you seeing alien invasions all over the place, Martha. Sometimes a flickering light is just a flickering light. Anyway, I'm just about out of this traffic jam. Be there shortly."

She hung up. But Martha spent the next couple of minutes with her phone pressed to her ear and her eyes fixed on the TV, waiting.

* * *

12:19 PM

"So you're saying this isn't normal Rift energy?" Ianto asked, handing Jack a cup of coffee.

"No, it's not." Jack took a sip, winced at its heat, and squinted at the readings. "I don't think it _is_ Rift energy."

"What then?" asked Gwen, confused.

Jack didn't answer. Ianto handed Gwen some tea. "Better check the CCTV around the square and the Rift's splinter paths," he told her. "If we don't know what this energy is, we can't know what might come out of the Rift."

Gwen nodded and moved over to the CCTV grid. Jack, meanwhile, was muttering some of the numbers appearing on the monitor to himself, looking troubled. "Six-seven by nineteen. Particle readings fifteen with an energy output of binary twelve and quaternary ninety-four point six, resembling both time energy and spatial energy, but it's neither," he muttered, and frowned. "I've seen this before."

The lights flickered. All three of them looked upwards.

"Something we should worry about, or is there just a problem with the power?" Gwen asked from the grid.

Jack checked it. "Nope, our generators are working just fine, and there's no fault in the cables."

But even as he spoke, a sudden, sharp rise in the energy appeared on the monitor, causing an alarm to go off. A second later all the screens in the room—the computers, the CCTV grid, even the Rift monitor—went static. Jack hissed in frustration, and began typing furiously, trying to reboot the software.

"But the CCTV isn't connected to the Rift software," Ianto protested. "How could it go out?"

"It's not. Something's interfering." Jack looked at the Manipulator, and then at the grid. "With everything. All our equipment. Radio, phones, CCTV, the manipulator, all of it."

"Something that doesn't want us figuring out what those fluctuations mean?" Gwen hypothesized.

"Could be." Jack ran his hands through his hair. He looked even more worried. "Wouldn't be the first"—

"What's that?" Ianto suddenly asked, pointing at the screen. A blurred shape had appeared there, like the static was clearing up a little, but not enough for the image to be distinct. It appeared to have human shape, however.

" _Remember me, in case I do not."_

They all jumped. "What the hell?" cried Gwen.

The speakers crackled again. _"I have walked amidst nowhere for a hundred lifetimes,"_ the grating voice whispered, _"in a place where time has no purpose and no meaning. I endlessly wander the desolation of nothingness, through eternal darkness and eternal light, lost in Oblivion."_

Jack's eyes narrowed, and he raised his voice. "Who are you?" he demanded. "What do you want?"

" _Is there an end?"_ asked the voice, in a harsher voice. " _Or have you forgotten?"_

The speakers went dead, and the screens suddenly cleared up. The blurred image had gone.

"What the bloody hell was that?" asked Ianto.

"Whatever's behind the fluctuations and the interference," Jack answered. He looked unnerved, but then he recollected himself, and looked up at the rest of the team. "Gwen, continue watching that grid, and turn on a news feed. Find out if anyone else saw or heard that."

"Will do." Gwen turned back to the CCTV screens.

"Ianto, I want you to get into the archives, go through the records, and look up our history of rift fluctuations. Find matches or near matches."

"The whole history?" Ianto asked, sounding aghast.

Jack pointed at the monitor.

"Make note of those numbers. They should be recorded in the metadata. You can use them to narrow it down. Keep me informed, especially with recent history. Find out when this last happened, and when it first started."

Ianto nodded and moved to his own station. Jack, meanwhile, looked back at the Rift monitor, where the readings remained unchanged, and he continued to try to make sense of them. The three of them worked in silence for a few minutes after that, as Ianto used the first half of the measurements to narrow down the history of the Rift's energy output. He could see from the records that the oscillations, in comparison with the Rift's usual activity, visibly were not normal. The anti-nodes were minimum where they should be maximum, or maximum where they should be minimum. Sometimes neither where there should be amplitude. The unusualness of it, and of Jack's calculations, however, enabled him to obtain what they needed.

Nearly half an hour later, he brought a stack of printouts to Jack. "Here. Knock yourself out."

Jack took the stack and began spreading it out on a table. Seeing what they were doing, Gwen returned from the CCTV monitors.

"The oldest record of this kind of energy appears to have occurred about twenty years ago, although there's a note saying that Torchwood One had been recording instances for at least ten years before that," Ianto explained. "They had readings of this kind on and off until 2007." He selected a sheet and showed Jack. "May 29th, 2007. There was an energy spike, and then it began happening with greater frequency and intensity."

Jack looked this over, and then moved to the end of the table and picked up the last couple of pages. "And it lasted throughout that summer," he muttered. "A period of two months." Looking at the very last page, he added, "The last reading records a huge spike, after which there weren't any more such fluctuations." He grimaced, and handed the page to Ianto. "But look at the date."

Ianto took it, and instantly paled. "August 8th, 2007."

Jack nodded. "Canary Wharf."

"Wasn't that when those Cybermen invaded?" Gwen asked, confused.

Ianto nodded weakly, and looked at Jack accusingly. "You knew what it was already, didn't you?"

"Yeah, I knew. I just needed to be sure." A dark look crossed Jack's face as he looked over the records. "The last time it was because Torchwood One tore a hole in the space-time continuum, a hole that's been sealed and which UNIT has been monitoring." He inhaled deeply, calming himself, and looked at Gwen and Ianto intently. "So why is it happening now?"

* * *

"Could you describe everything again, everything you remember?" Captain Price's voice sounded a bit distorted, but there was no sign of the same static Martha had heard earlier.

"There's not much else to say," she answered. "It said something about emptiness and enduring something. It was a bit hard to follow."

She heard Captain Price sigh. "It's not much to go on," she admitted. "Everything also went static here about the time you say this happened, but there weren't any other reports of odd images on the TV screens and voices on the coms or on the phones. But we'll monitor everything." She paused. "Did anyone else in the café see or hear what you did?"

Martha thought back to the waitress and Ted, as well as the man at a corner table who'd come in shortly after she had. She hadn't been watching them when the strange static occurred, but when she'd left the café, Ted was still grumbling to himself, and the waitress was watching the news, looking bored.

"No, I don't think so," Martha admitted. "Just me."

She saw Tish fidget in the driver's seat.

"Well, thank you for informing us," Price said. "We'll look into it. Tell me immediately if it happens again."

The line went dead. Martha stowed her phone into her breast pocket.

"Maybe you just had a really late night," Tish remarked.

"Maybe," Martha answered, though she wasn't really paying attention. In spite of everything that Tish had witnessed in the previous year, with Richard Lazarus and the Master, she still remained largely closed to the possibility of alien involvement, much to Martha's frustration. She supposed that her sister simply wanted to forget, and tried to do so by avoiding the topic of aliens entirely. It had made it difficult for Martha to talk with her sister about anything anymore.

Tish turned a corner, and they began looking around for a fast food joint with a drive-thru, or rather, one which Tish was willing to eat at. Martha had left the café as soon as Tish arrived, so she could talk to her superior without anyone unwanted listening in.

"What about there?" she asked, pointing at a hamburger restaurant.

Tish wrinkled her nose in some disgust, but didn't disagree. Neither of them had much time before they were required at their jobs, and at that moment it was either eat an unhealthy meal, or not eat at all. Tish therefore pulled into the drive-thru and craned her neck out to try to read their menu.

"Tell me again why we couldn't just eat at the café?" she grumbled.

"Think I wanted anyone listening to that?" asked Martha coolly.

Tish snorted. "In other words, you didn't want them thinking you're a nutter."

Martha shrugged and looked back out the window. "No more than you already think I am," she murmured sadly. Tish did not appear to hear her.

A few moments passed. Tish ordered and picked up the meals and handed them to Martha to sort through. As she handed Tish her sandwich, her phone buzzed, and she looked at it to see a text. She grimaced, and put it back in her pocket.

"That's not UNIT again?" asked Tish wearily. "I'd like to be able to at least talk to you before you have to head back."

"It's not very important," Martha said. "Just some matter with one of the medics, about some alien RNA we've been experimenting with. It can wait."

They arrived at a stoplight, and waited for a few minutes in complete silence. Martha thought back to the strange voice on her phone. Tish's scepticism, and the lack of substance with which Martha was able to report the occurrence, had caused her to doubt herself a little. Still, she knew what she thought she'd heard.

Growing bored, Tish turned on the radio, about halfway through a Taylor Swift song. Martha grimaced, but Tish began humming along. Martha simply continued to look out the window. Through a gap in the trees Martha could just barely see the London skyline in the fog. The snow had lightened a little, but she was sure that it was even colder than it was only twenty minutes ago. She shivered, wishing Tish would turn the heat up a bit more.

While Tish continued to hum and Martha watched the passersby, still preoccupied, they felt the ground tremble slightly. Tish paused and looked around, but they couldn't see anything. Then the radio went static.

Martha and Tish both looked at it, the former warily, the latter in annoyance. Tish reached over to switch the radio off, but Martha grabbed her wrist and gave her a warning look, listening closely. They could just catch bits of the song behind the static, but it was too distorted to be recognizable. They could also hear disjointed voices, other radio stations, like there was something wrong with the tuning. Martha sighed and let go of Tish's wrist, shaking her head. Then they heard it:

" _Neural relays unstable. Attempting to compensate."_

" _No, you don't!"_ a more human voice snarled. " _I will not continue as your slave!"_

Tish looked at Martha, wide-eyed. "Was that…?" she asked, but Martha nodded before she could finish the question.

The radio emitted a strange, screeching, grinding noise that caused them both to wince. The first, more monotonous voice began whispering a string of numbers. The ground trembled again.

" _Ten thousand years of incarceration!"_ the enraged second voice shouted, causing Martha and Tish to jump. _"But no more!_ _Find him!_ _"_

There was a huge roar, and the ground shook violently. The people outside stumbled, and a few car alarms went off.

"What the hell is…" Martha started, but then Tish gasped.

"Martha," she said slowly, her eyes wide, and Martha looked to see a fireball looming from the top floors of One Canada Square, visible through the fog. She stared, dumbfounded, at the burning skyscraper, barely registering the yelling outside, nor the song that came back on the radio, nor, until Tish elbowed her, that her phone was ringing. She quickly answered.

"Dr. Jones, please report to Captain Magambo at Canary Wharf immediately."

* * *

1:03 PM

The Rift Manipulator's alarms blared, and Jack dashed to the monitor. "That's strong enough to pinpoint! Ianto!" he shouted.

"On it," Ianto assured him, dashing to his station. Working quickly, he opened the global satellite grid, and began typing. The map began narrowing downward toward Britain. Jack moved to Ianto's side, and watched over his shoulder.

"Got it!" Ianto said triumphantly, and the map began to narrow downward further.

But when they saw the location of the energy spikes, Ianto's face fell, while Jack's became stony.

"Pack your bags with enough clothes for a possible overnight stay, and some lunches," he ordered. "I want you both in the conference room, ready to leave, in fifteen minutes."

"Where are we going?" asked Gwen.

"Torchwood One," he answered ominously.

* * *

At about one o' clock in the afternoon on December 28th, 2009, the top floors of One Canada Square, the tallest building in the United Kingdom, violently exploded. Images of smoke emerging from the burning tower appeared on every news station in Britain. They all saw it. The police and fire brigade mustered themselves to converge on Canary Wharf. Citizens of London gathered in the streets nearby. Reporters and news anchors speculated on terrorism. The BBC broadcast the footage of the tower worldwide, and in the minds of those watching, the image of a burning tower recalled the footage from eight years previous, of two other burning skyscrapers in New York. The imaginations of the whole world went wild. Foreign governments contacted the Prime Minister. It was an act of terrorism: nothing more, and nothing less.

But far from England, in a place unknown to any of these governments or news anchors, a group of men and women in military uniform silently watched the footage of the explosion; then, with their interference, the footage to the hidden channel, the source of the voices that had interfered with the radio and satellite signals only seconds earlier, came back on the screens.

"Clear up that image," their leader commanded. "Let's see what we are dealing with."

"Yes, Lord Hannibal," someone submitted. "It was a specific excitation, which will make the source easier to find. If we can lock onto the signal…"

"There's no need to tell me how," Hannibal snapped. "Just get it done."

The technician bowed, and returned to his equipment. One of the women, staring at the footage, asked "What about Aribo and Pax?"

"Never mind them. There's no point in searching." There wasn't even the smallest trace of regret in Hannibal's voice. They all recognized this, and thus nobody else spoke. There was nothing to say.

"Just about got it," the technician announced.

The static began to clear up, but rather than the news feed from London, the screens showed a humanoid outline, which, with help, quickly came into focus. Hannibal stared at the image, and then looked at his second-in-command.

"Hasdrubal, get me a face match," he ordered.

It was done in a minute. Hasdrubal soon brought up the result, and inhaled sharply, astonished.

"Impossible," breathed the woman who had spoken earlier.

Behind him, Hannibal could hear some of his other followers whispering to each other at the inconceivable match they were seeing. But the results were there. And it was just as fitting as it was unlikely. While the others whispered in disbelief, however, Hannibal smiled, a dangerous, compelling smile that his followers had all learned to fear.

"Well, well, well," he said quietly. "Now _that_ is very interesting."

Hasdrubal swallowed. "But how…? Nobody could have survived that."

"The 'how' is immaterial right now," Hannibal told him. "What matters is the significance. It is a gift for us, the answer we need, and the perfect leverage." He turned and looked at the others intensely. "Capture that ship."

.


	3. Amidst Snow and Debris

.

 **Chapter Two**  
 **Amidst Snow and Debris**

The members of Torchwood usually kept extra clothes on hand, either because of late nights or because chasing after aliens inevitably led to ruined clothes; it was only for this reason that Gwen was ready to leave in fifteen minutes, even giving herself enough time to make a quick phone call home. Rhys hadn't been happy about her sudden expedition to London without any explanation. The truth was, even though Rhys was now aware of Torchwood's existence, Jack hadn't provided Gwen with much explanation for the day trip. She'd normally envy Ianto for not having family in Cardiff demanding explanations, but ever since they'd looked through the records of Torchwood One's activities, he wore a haunted expression to rival Jack's, making Gwen wary of asking any further questions.

Then she learned of the Canary Wharf explosion.

When she and Ianto arrived at the conference room with some food (sandwiches and a box of leftover pizza) and extra clothes as per Jack's instructions, they found him standing by the table, conversing with a man in an olive-green military uniform on the TV screen.

"The explosion occurred near the top of the tower," the officer was saying. "The damage to the roof and the floors from the forty-seventh to the fiftieth is catastrophic. We've sent soldiers and fire brigades to sweep the damaged floors for survivors, but there have been few reports as yet."

"Jack," Gwen interrupted. Both men looked at her.

"Just in time," Jack said. Looking at the officer, he added, "Colonel, this is my team. That's Ianto, a former One employee, and Gwen, our liaison with the Cardiff police. Gwen, Ianto, this is Colonel Alan Mace from UNIT."

Mace only nodded in greeting, before he continued, "Our current priority is to clear the building of all personnel and troops. We've got experts trying to ascertain the structural integrity of the building. Once the tower is clear and our fire chief gives the go-ahead, we will send in some teams to try to find the cause of the explosion. Unfortunately, we have limited information concerning all of Torchwood One's doing."

"So you're also sending us?" Jack queried.

Mace gave a curt nod. "I'm sending a helicopter to Roald Dahl Plass from our base in Winchcombe. It should pick you up in about twenty minutes. After that, we can expect to see each other within an hour."

"Quick chopper," remarked Jack dryly.

"It's a Chinook class helicopter."

Jack raised his eyebrows. "Wow. At least you're sending us in style."

Mace ignored him. "Two years ago, when Torchwood Tower fell under UNIT's control, we did all we could to document the extent of the organization's actions and their collection of alien artifacts. Much of it was gone, however, by the time we gained control of the situation." He looked annoyed. "You move very quickly, Captain Harkness, even when based in Cardiff."

Jack shrugged, but he didn't look remotely apologetic.

"We still had access to some of Torchwood's records," Mace continued. "The CO over Canary Wharf tells me that a considerable portion of it is encrypted, and we've never been able to gain access. UNIT's scientists have spent the last two years trying to sort through and identify everything you couldn't secure."

"And did you?" asked Jack.

"No." Mace again looked annoyed. "We simply do not have enough information."

"Nor did we, though," Ianto murmured in a strained voice.

"I've sent for Dr. Jones, who will be working with you as well," Mace informed them. "I want all four of you to head the soldiers we will send in. Find out what caused the explosion, if it's alien, and if there's any means to prevent this from happening again."

"Right," Jack agreed. "So what do you know already?"

"We have a schematic of the building and have simulated the damage from the explosion, based on where we believe the epicentre to be. From footage of the blast and sparse reports from personnel we believe the explosion to have occurred somewhere between the 47th and 50th floors, southeast area."

"Are you sure of that?" asked Jack, frowning.

Colonel Mace raised an eyebrow at the odd question. "There was a laboratory in the area. Captain Magambo, the CO, says there were all sorts of uncatalogued alien devices in there that could have caused this, although there's also a possibility it was merely a gas explosion. I can show you the relevant data."

Jack held up a hand, quieting him. "Actually, colonel, it may be more complicated than you imagine."

"And what makes you say that?"

"We were already about to head to London before you contacted me, before I even learned about the explosion," Jack explained. "There has been an increase in the Cardiff Rift's activity for the past couple of hours, but the energy emissions do not match the usual artron energies that come from time rifts."

"And you believe it's related?" asked Mace.

"The energy spiked at the exact second of the Canary Wharf blast," Jack informed him. "That's reason enough by itself. Also, we've tracked the source of the emission, and I believe it was coming from the Canary Wharf breach."

Mace visibly stiffened. "That was sealed."

"That doesn't mean there can't be related activity."

The colonel, experienced in investigations and critical thinking both in extra-terrestrial matters and standard military operations, scrutinized Jack for a moment, before remarking coolly, "You've drawn this conclusion rather quickly."

"It's not the first time we've seen this happen," Jack argued. "For two months we received such emissions corresponding to the ghost shifts in the weeks before the attacks at Canary Wharf. Whatever's happening now, it has something to do with Torchwood One's actions that summer."

Mace rubbed his eyes and temples with his thumb and forefinger, and frowning at this new development, he said, "Captain, we've had no activity related to that incident for nearly two years."

"I'd bet my life," Jack shot back. "And believe me, that's quite a bet."

"Why would you receive readings in Cardiff but we get nothing at the site of the breach?" Mace demanded.

Jack paused. It was a valid point. But he could only go by what he knew, so he quietly responded, "You tell me."

"We have scientists monitoring it," Mace assured him.

"And they've said nothing?"

"They haven't," Mace admitted. He now sounded troubled. "They and their instruments would most likely have been caught in the blast, but I'll see if we can access their records."

"Thank you," Jack said, and he meant it.

"Look, Harkness, it's out of respect for you and your work that I agree to investigate the breach, even though the explosion occurred a couple of floors below it and doesn't look at all related." Mace sighed. "This won't be easy to explain to my commanding officer."

"Jed Conner?" Jack grinned. "I've heard he's got all the submissiveness and humility of Douglas MacArthur."

Mace's lip tightened, but he chose not to comment. "You'd better head out. Inform me as soon as you enter London."

* * *

Officially Canary Wharf was the site of an ongoing investigation of Torchwood One's activities; unofficially it had become a UNIT military base. Ever since the Dalek attack two years earlier, Canary Wharf had been completely closed off to the public. UNIT had surrounded the entire commercial block with razor wire and erected military barrier at every street entrance. They had closed the Tube station, forcing London's transportation network to build a new route bypassing the station entirely. Ever way into Canary Wharf was closely watched; every inch of the fenced and razor-wired perimeter closely patrolled. No one entered or left without UNIT knowing it.

Martha Jones had only ever been at Canary Wharf once before, as part of an ongoing project in one of their labs; she therefore was more prepared for the strict rules Captain Magambo enforced in the complex. But Tish, as she drove Martha to the entrance up Trafalgar Way, fidgeted uncomfortably at the razor wire and the guns strapped over the guards' shoulders, perhaps reminded too strongly of the dark days under the Master no one but her family and a few select others even remembered.

"Here," Martha said as they approached the barrier at the end of the street. "Drop me off here. They won't let you approach much further."

Tish nodded and stopped the car. Martha clambered out of the car as one of the soldiers approached and demanded to see her ID. Tish waited nervously as Martha complied, producing a card for the soldier to examine. When he nodded and stood aside to let Martha in, she looked back at Tish, assured her that she'd call her and their mother later that night, and then closed the door. She heard Tish put her car into reverse and drive away as the soldiers let her through.

No sooner was she past the barrier when the sound of ambulance sirens met her ears, and she stepped aside and the soldiers raised the barrier as two ambulances roared past. Martha watched it go with a grimace, knowing that there would be more, if the distant sirens within Canary Wharf were any indication.

One of the soldiers pointed her in the right direction, and at a quick pace she moved past the first building and turned right. Once she did, she could see the enormous edifice of One Canada Square, or Torchwood Tower, the tallest skyscraper in Britain, smoke billowing from the floors at the top. Martha paused and took a moment to stare at the tower, reflecting on the events that had taken place there two years earlier, the day that changed all their lives.

She was drawn from her ruminations when two Greyhound soldiers approached her. "Dr. Martha Jones?" one of them asked.

"Yes, that's me."

"Please come with us," the soldier said firmly. "Colonel Mace is waiting for you."

Martha nodded and followed the two men, weaving their way through the crowd soldiers on the sidewalk, all keeping clear of the road so ambulances and fire engines could come through. A couple of helicopters flew overhead and circumambulating the tower.

Before long the soldiers led Martha into the debris-littered plaza, where three more ambulances waited. Through the heavy snowfall Martha watched a soldier push a stretcher bearing a prone woman, barely conscious and covered with burns. Under normal circumstances Martha would have been with the medics caring for said woman, but it seemed that was not the use which Mace intended to put her to today.

The soldiers did not escort Martha to the damaged tower, but to one of the adjacent buildings, where, she was informed, UNIT was using a conference room as a command post for the colonel to work from. In the chaos of the disaster and the concerns over the structural integrity of the building, they'd vacated their normal quarters in the tower.

Presently her escorts showed her into said conference room, which might once had been such, but Martha found that it now was not a conference room so much as it was a communications centre. There was still a long table in the middle of the room, but it was covered with computer terminals. Both ends of the room also housed computer stations, leaving the room a little packed. There was a team of scientists at various stations, including one she'd worked with before, Dr. David Findlay, who gave her a nod in greeting.

The colonel himself and Captain Price made their way toward her, and she saluted them. "Colonel. Captain Price."

"Dr. Jones," Mace returned her greeting. "Thank you for coming."

"What's the situation?" asked Martha. "Do we know how it happened yet?"

Mace shook his head. "That's why I've brought you here. I'm also bringing in Torchwood to help. Since you've worked with them before, I want you helping them."

Martha raised an eyebrow, and couldn't help the subtle grin. While it was hardly the time or the place, she was happy for the opportunity to work with Jack Harkness again.

"How soon do they get here?" she asked.

"We're airlifting them in," Price informed her. "It will be about twenty minutes."

"Colonel," Findlay called out, "you'd better look at this."

Martha followed Mace over to Findlay's monitor. He was looking at a record of energy readings. Martha could see a series of energy spikes, getting larger and larger until they arrived at an enormous burst at the end of the record. She wasn't sure what these readings meant, but it didn't look like anything good to her, and judging by Findlay's shocked expression, he shared that opinion.

He pointed at the end of the record. "That last spike was at the exact moment of the explosion," he informed them. "The record gets cut off after that, but it plainly shows that the energy levels have been building up for a couple of days now."

Mace swore angrily. Martha looked between them in confusion. "What's going on? What is that?"

"Energy readings from the breach," Findlay informed her. "I wish we could see if there are still energy emissions up there, but presumably the instruments were wrecked in"—

"The breach?" Martha interrupted. "You mean the one the Cybermen and Daleks came through two years ago?"

"Exactly," Mace said.

"But it was closed," Martha stammered, confused and no little frightened. "The Doctor sealed it."

"Apparently that's changed," Findlay said grimly. "No idea how, though. To my knowledge, nobody was doing anything different."

Martha swallowed. "Did anything come out this time?"

"We don't know," Findlay slowly admitted. "But these emissions are very similar to those that summer, when the Dalek ship came through and then Cyberman ghosts. I think it's reasonable to assume that something else might have come through today."

"Any word on why it was Torchwood that informed me and not my own staff?" Mace growled.

Martha stared at him. She'd seen Mace frustrated or annoyed, but for the first time, she was seeing the rather mild-mannered colonel trembling with fury. And his words deeply alarmed her. What the hell had had happened here?

Findlay looked at the rest of the staff nervously, but they could only return his expression. Unable to answer, he simply shrugged.

"We can't know until they find Dr. Strickland and Dr. Bachchan," Captain Price finally said.

"Who are they?" asked Martha.

"The scientists in charge of monitoring the breach," Findlay answered. "It was their responsibility to send Captain Magambo regular reports on energy emissions."

"Do we know that they came in to work today?" asked Mace.

"Captain Magambo would know," Price answered. At Mace's nod, she looked away and turned on her headset. "Magambo, report."

Martha looked back at Findlay. "Is there anything else we know yet?" she asked apprehensively.

"No," Findlay sighed. "Except apparently the activity of this breach somehow can affect the Rift in Cardiff, which is partly why Torchwood realized something was happening before we did. Aside from that, though…." He shrugged his shoulders helplessly.

"There's no way we can monitor the breach now?' asked Mace.

"No," Findlay answered apologetically. "Not without sending someone up there to monitor it directly, and without knowing if the breach is still emitting energy or if anything came out of it… well, we're facing a complete unknown here."

"Jesus," breathed Mace. He straightened, and looked away sombrely, an expression Martha immediately recognized as one he adopted when he was deciding on a course of action. Findlay looked back to the record, and Martha waited for someone to speak.

After a moment's silence, Captain Price approached them, her expression grave.

"Did you reach Magambo?" asked Mace.

"Yes," Price answered quietly. "She's confirmed that Dr. Bachchan and Dr. Strickland came in to work today, and are missing."

Mace's mouth thinned and his expression hardened. He then looked at a monitor showing news coverage of the burning tower. "Captain, please give Magambo the following instructions: all units, including firefighters, are to continue sweeping floors 45 through 49—no, 48. But for the time being, floors 49 and 50 are off limits until Harkness arrives. There are to be men stationed at the stairwells between 48 and 49, keeping watch. We are on alert, code yellow."

Martha inhaled deeply. Code yellow, possible the most nerve-wracking alert status UNIT employed, meant that the troopers were to patrol their designated areas fully armed, their weapons loaded, anticipating a hostile alien force.

Given what had happened the last time the breach had opened, Martha could only pray that UNIT's code yellow status proved to be a false alarm.

* * *

On the forty-ninth floor, everything was burning.

Privates Craig Morrison and Ben Hampton (A.K.A. Greyhounds 32 and 35 respectively) clambered through rubble, a firefighter named Schwarz guiding them through, all wearing gas masks and hard helmets. Having received the order to immediately vacate the forty-ninth and fiftieth floors, the three men quickly began to navigate their way back towards the nearest usable stairwell, but it wasn't easy. The top two floors were so damaged, and the fire so intense in some places, that they could not make their way down easily. The nearest staircase was the site of a blazing inferno that they could not get past; and the ceiling in the hall they had originally come through had collapsed, blocking their original route. Even before the new order, the search for survivors had turned as dangerous as it was excruciating. The actual site of the blast proved impossible to approach from the forty-ninth floor, as the damage was so heavy as block the halls leading there. At the same time, moving through the burning floors felt like moving through an oven. Morrison clung to the heavy fire extinguisher, holding it forward the way he normally did a weapon.

Schwarz paused at a junction, cautiously looked around a corner, and then quickly blasted his fire extinguisher down for a minute, before gesturing for the soldiers to follow. Morrison knew that Schwarz was trying to find the way around the wall of flame blocking their original route, back to the staircase they knew was still usable.

Schwarz stopped again, his eyes fixed on a door nearby, listening closely. Morrison heard it too: heavy coughing. They had been ordered to vacate the floor, but that did not mean they could not pick up any survivors they came across on the way out.

The firefighter kicked the door open. A man lay there, his leg pinned under a fallen bookshelf. His entire body was convulsing from the force of his coughing. At the firefighter's direction, Morrison and Hampton carefully lifted the shelf off the man, who moaned at the release of pressure from his injured leg, but said nothing.

"Come on," Schwarz said, pulling the man's arm over his shoulder. "We'll get you out. What's your name?"

"Scott"—the man coughed— "Walters."

Schwarz moved to clamber to his feet, but Walters, who looked to weigh over two hundred pounds, and seemed unable to stand, only dragged Schwarz back down. Morrison quickly pulled the man's other arm over his own shoulders, and together he and Schwarz pulled Scott Walters into a standing position and fairly dragged him out. Schwarz soon transferred Walters's arm to Hampton's shoulder so he continued navigating their way through the blaze. Fortunately, there only remained one small fire between them and the staircase, which Schwarz was able to push back with his fire extinguisher, just long enough for them to pass through unharmed.

As they pulled Scott Walters down the staircase at the end of the hall, Morrison wondered why his mouth tasted like lead.

It took about twenty minutes to get Walters down to the twentieth floor. Walters frequently had to stop to catch his breath, or because he was feeling light-headed, but eventually they arrived at the twentieth floor, where a team of medics were waiting to look him over, treat him, and take to an ambulance if needed. This left Morrison, Hampton, and Schwarz free to head back up. Colonel Mace had forbidden the troopers from entering floors 49 and 50, but they knew from communications that there were still missing personnel, and felt that they, along with the rest of the soldiers and firefighters, could at least continue combing the three or four floors below.

As they reached floor 49, Morrison reached into his pocket and took out a little tin of breath mints, then lifted his mask long enough to pop one into his mouth, hoping to get rid of the metallic taste.

"Mind if I have one of those as well?" asked Hampton.

Morrison handed him the tin. Hampton too popped one into his mouth and replaced his mask.

As they approached the burning floors, they heard footsteps coming down the hall, and another soldier Morrison didn't know appeared helping a lab worker down the stairs.

"Oh, good," the soldier said, upon seeing them. "I've only got one fireman with me and there's a whole lot of personnel on Floor 48. They were stuck in an office and we only just broke them out."

Morrison nodded and he and Hampton headed for that floor. As they approached, Morrison grimaced, pulled his mask back up, and pushed his breath mint into the back of his mouth, under his tongue, before spitting on the stairwell and restoring his mask.

"Problem, Morrison?" laughed Schwarz.

"Breath mint isn't helping," Morrison muttered.

He saw Hampton raise his eyebrows. "Huh. Same here. It tastes like someone stuffed my mouth with metal dust. And your mint isn't doing much to get rid of it. If anything, it tastes worse."

With that, he too lifted his mask and spat out the breath mint, and replaced it.

"You've got a funny taste in your mouth too?" asked Schwarz, his brow furrowed.

"And me," Morrison added, frowning under his gas mask. "That's weird."

"Are either of you having trouble breathing?" asked Schwarz. "There's all kinds of fumes in here."

Hampton and Morrison both shook their heads. Schwarz simply looked at them. Morrison couldn't quite read his expression, as it was half hidden under his mask, but in the end Schwarz shook his head and led the way into the burning floor.

It didn't take them long to locate the group of trapped personnel, three lab workers, being led out by a single firefighter, but it was immediately apparent that they were in a poor condition to clamber out without assistance. They all were coughing, of course, but more than that, Morrison could tell the moment he pulled one woman to her feet that she was clammy and dazed. He grimaced as he noticed that she had vomit all down her front. He supposed that her condition was most likely from inhaling too much smoke. His gas mask protected him, but he could tell that some of the fumes in the tower were positively noxious.

Schwarz took another of the lab workers, while Hampton, left empty-handed save for his fire extinguisher, led the way out. Once they were back on the stairwell, Schwarz asked the other firefighter if there were any more personnel on that floor.

"We've swept the place pretty thoroughly. I'm pretty sure these are the last."

They slowly made their way back down. The woman Morrison supported stumbled, and he paused, waiting for her to clamber back to her feet, but her knees buckled, and she doubled over. Morrison quickly lowered her to the ground, allowing her to vomit (or attempt to). Hampton approached to help, pausing only to tell Schwarz and the other firefighter to go on.

The woman violently convulsed in her stomach's efforts to purge itself, but evidently there was nothing left to purge. Morrison looked upward at the floors above. At least they were out of the smoke and fumes. There was that to be said. But the taste was worse, and either that or listening to the woman's retching was making him feel a little ill himself.

Beside him, Hampton put down his fire extinguisher and wiped some sweat from his brow.

"God, it's hot up there," he remarked. "I'm glad I don't have to do this all the time. Dunno how blokes like Schwarz can stand it."

He leaned against the wall, waiting for the woman to stop heaving. Morrison grimaced, lifted his gas mask (for which there wasn't much more use while they were down there anyway), and spat again, in a futile effort to alleviate the strange taste. He supposed there must have been some fumes up there or something they'd somehow inhaled despite the masks.

At length, the woman stopped throwing up, and Morrison bent down so that he was at face-level with her. "Are you ready to continue?" he asked gently.

She nodded weakly, and Morrison again pulled her to her feet. Hampton straightened. They continued.

Progress was slow. The woman's weakness and nausea hampered any hope of getting to the medics quickly, and in the end Hampton had to take her other arm, so they could half-drag her the rest of the way, just as they had Scott Walters. But they began slowing again as they neared the medics at the twentieth floor. Hampton, seemingly exhausted, began pausing every other floor to catch his breath. At floor 32, he stopped completely, and swayed a little.

"Are you all right?" asked Morrison.

Hampton nodded, and took off his helmet and rubbed his temples wearily, as though he were suffering from a headache. "It's nothing. I'm just feeling a bit light-headed."

"You were fine ten minutes ago," Morrison said, bewildered.

"I know. It's come on really suddenly." Hampton leaned against the wall.

"Were you wearing your mask properly up there?"

He nodded. "Maybe it was the heat."

Morrison lowered the woman, allowing her to sit against the wall as well. He then looked further down the stairwell. "Only two more flights to the medics," he reminded the woman and Hampton. "Come on. We've got this."

Hampton nodded. Once he was ready, he again helped Morrison hoist up the woman, and they began again.

Five minutes later, when they finally left her in the hands of the medics, Hampton again leaned against the wall of the stairwell. Morrison had gotten them to Floor 20 was quickly as he could, but Hampton was slowing down; and to own the truth, Morrison was starting to feel a little light-headed himself. But aside from that and the metallic taste, he felt fine.

Hampton, on the other hand, began to slump downwards, his hands and knees trembling. He looked rather green as well. Morrison moved towards him, concerned. "Are you gonna be all right?"

Hampton nodded. "I just need a minute. Just"—

But he said no more. Instead, he abruptly doubled over and began vomiting violently.

* * *

 _A/N: Note of changes from the original_

 _In the original story, this chapter took place during a violent thunderstorm rather than a snowstorm, and Jack simply drove his SUV over to London, but I had to make some changes because the first time, ignorant American that I am, I wasn't aware of just how much distance there was between London and Cardiff. There's just no way that Jack could drive from Cardiff to London in less than an hour. I tried to find ways around this for a couple of weeks, and in the end, the simplest way was to have UNIT airlift the Torchwood Team from Cardiff. I changed the thunderstorm to a snowstorm for two reasons: the first is that this scene now takes place in late December rather than July (and plot-wise, there's actually a really good reason for that particular change), and the second is that UNIT's a lot more likely to use helicopters during a snowstorm than a thunderstorm._

 _I won't say as much concerning the previous chapter, except that in the original story, the Canary Wharf explosion, and its cause, was completely by chance. This time it wasn't._

 _Update: The corrected, updated version of this chapter is intended to heighten UNIT's and Torchwood's awareness of the danger, by pointing out that somehow Torchwood knew something was going on at Canary Wharf before UNIT did, even though UNIT was on site while Torchwood was in Cardiff. Additionally, I've added another complication to UNIT's sweep of the tower of personnel, which is where we just left off. I touched on this in the original, but this time I made it a bit bigger. _


	4. Thunder Horse

**Chapter Three**  
 **Thunder Horse**

Torchwood Three touched down at Canary Wharf in record time, about an hour and a half after the explosion. By then the fires, trapped in the upper floors, were starting to die down, but this was all that Jack got to observe as he stepped out of the military helicopter. Immediately a team of UNIT troopers shepherded him, Gwen, and Ianto away from the Canary Wharf plaza to meet with Colonel Mace and his staff in the former CGC1 building.

Before long, they were shown into the conference room. The first person Jack saw was Martha Jones, who was with a UNIT scientist Jack didn't know, looking closely at a monitor. As Jack walked in, Martha looked up and quickly dashed over to greet him.

After a quick hug, Jack said with a wry smile, "It's a family reunion."

Martha returned his smile with a more subdued one, and said nothing. Jack then turned to Colonel Mace and saluted him.

"Thank you again for coming," Mace said.

Jack nodded, and quickly snapped into business mode. "What have you learned so far?"

Mace grimaced and proceeded to brief Jack on their findings concerning the breach and its energy emissions, as well as UNIT's withdrawing all the troopers from the top two floors until they could put together a special team to investigate further. Jack was satisfied that he had been right about the breach's inexplicable opening, but that was the only thing to be satisfied about.

"I'd pull your troops out of _all_ the damaged floors, if I were you," he told Mace cautiously.

"I've weighed the risks," Mace said quietly. "There are still missing personnel in those floors. I can't leave them to die up there."

Jack sighed, but had no argument for this. "Did any soldiers attempt to search the top floors for survivors before you pulled them out?"

"They did," Captain Price affirmed. "But the fires were worst up there. It doesn't sound like they were able to access much of that floor.

Jack nodded, frowning. "So you're putting together a special team to sweep those floors for the missing scientists who _should_ have warned you about the emissions, and to find the cause of the explosion and the emissions, if possible."

"In a nutshell," Price said.

"Who else is going to be on this team?"

"I've contacted Colonel Reynolds of the Thunder Horse division," Mace said. "He's sending in a squadron to aid in the sweep."

Jack paused to try to place the familiar name. Then he raised an eyebrow. "You're bringing in marines?"

Mace nodded. "The best UNIT has got. I need them to comb through those floors with your supervision."

Jack nodded. "Fine. But I don't want to advise them from here. I'm going up there with them."

Mace raised an eyebrow. "Are you certain?"

"I'll be fine," Jack said firmly. "I'll be in far less danger than your marines, at any rate. And if there is a hostile alien force, it is best if I deal with it."

Mace opened his mouth to object, but Martha interrupted him. "Jack, if there's something hostile up there, you'd be just as useless captured or worse."

"It's still better me than the men who are coming with me," Jack said gently.

Mace was now looking between Jack and Martha with an odd expression that Jack found almost clownish, but he made no remark. Let UNIT remain ignorant of his unique condition for the time being.

Changing the subject, he asked, "How much do you already know about the breach?"

"Only what we've got from the report on the events of August 8th two years ago," Mace answered.

"I see." Jack looked back at Mace with interest. "A trustworthy source, I'm guessing?"

Mace nodded. "He contacted us once he learned we'd taken possession of Canary Wharf." At Jack's contemplative nod, Mace's eyes narrowed. "I don't think I need to stress our confidence in the Doctor with _you,_ Harkness."

"The Doctor?" Ianto breathed, disconcerted. Gwen too was looking at Jack curiously.

He and Mace ignored them. "No, you don't," Jack reassured Mace. "In spite of Torchwood's old policy, I too have every confidence in him."

Mace accepted this, and continued, "He believed it imperative that someone he deemed trustworthy keep constant surveillance of the site, although he stressed that he didn't expect the breach to ever open again. We have had staff taking readings 'round the clock ever since, and as the Doctor said, there has been no unusual activity until now. Any fluctuation would have set off an alarm."

Jack smiled grimly. "So there's no way your scientists just plain didn't notice this."

"No."

Nobody spoke. The implication and its obvious danger were clear. The situation had just turned considerably more complicated than merely investigating an accident.

Still another complication arose seconds later, when both Colonel Mace and Captain Price frowned and placed their ears on their headsets. "Go ahead, Captain Magambo," Price said.

Jack, Martha, Gwen, and Ianto watched as Mace and Price's expression turned to identical, confused frowns.

"How many so far?" asked Price. "Sixteen? And what of personnel?"

After a pause, Mace winced. "Damn it."

Price looked at Mace, who gave a firm nod, assenting to something they couldn't hear. She then said, "Thank you, Magambo. We'll send them right over."

Mace looked at the others. "Magambo needs Dr. Jones at the medical lab in the tower immediately, but I suggest you all go. It seems that sixteen soldiers and firefighters who had been searching the top floors are getting sick with something."

Jack's eyebrows went up, and Martha said sharply, "On it."

* * *

"How long were they up there?" asked Jack, watching as Martha and another physician named Dr. Javier Rosas, bent over various affected soldiers and firefighters. Since Magambo's alert, two more had taken ill.

"At least half an hour," Captain Erisa Magambo answered grimly.

As they spoke, a third medic rolled in a cart with some extra equipment. Martha straightened and grabbed a few instruments from it.

"Something must have contaminated those floors." Jack speculated.

Magambo's mouth thinned. "To our knowledge, there was nothing toxic up there."

"To your knowledge," Gwen retorted. "Doesn't necessarily mean there wasn't something."

Magambo had nothing to say to this. As they watched, Martha and Dr. Rosas bent over one of the soldiers again. They couldn't see what they were doing, but moments later both straightened and began speaking to each other in hushed whispers. None of the Torchwood party could hear what they were saying, but Jack could tell from their expressions that it wasn't anything good.

"Are those floors cleared?" asked Jack.

"There are still people missing," Magambo informed him. "But when number seventeen came down here, Colonel Mace consented to withdrawing the rest of the units."

"Were they all at a certain floor? Or in a certain area?"

Magambo shook her head. "All of them were at different locations. Some closer to the epicentre, some further away. And they all fell ill at different times."

"And none of them saw anything other than smoke and fire?"

"So they say. We've started getting similar reports from the hospitals about injured personnel we evacuated."

At this moment, Martha handed her equipment to Dr. Rosas, who began checking the other soldiers with the medic who had rolled the cart in. Then Martha approached Magambo, her face very grim.

"Well?" asked Magambo.

"All of them are severely nauseated and disoriented," Martha reported. "They all have high fevers, and some are suffering from diarrhea and from headaches. They're also reporting a strange metallic taste in their mouths."

"Metallic?" asked Jack sharply.

"That's what they're saying."

"Why is that important?" asked Gwen.

Neither answered her. "Martha," Jack said cautiously, "are you aware that it might mean…?"

"Yes, we know," she interrupted him.

At that moment Dr. Rosas joined them. "Are all the soldiers out of those floors?" he asked Magambo.

"I think so," she answered. "What have you found?"

"We got up to four hundred rads from that first man's clothes alone," Dr. Rosas informed them.

It took a second for his meaning to sink in. When it did, the mission became that much more complicated.

"Oh, God," Gwen breathed.

"So it _is_ radiation sickness?" Martha asked.

"Looks like it," Dr. Rosas said gravely. "We've got to get them to the hospital right away."

"Oh, that's just great," snarled Magambo, wiping sweat from her forehead. " _Shit._ " She turned on her headset. "Colonel, we've got a problem."

As she spoke to Mace, the others continued talking.

"The metal taste?" asked Gwen.

"Many of the survivors at Chernobyl reported having a lead taste in their mouths that in some cases lasted years," Rosas answered. "It also happens with radiotherapy."

Gwen looked at the affected soldiers compassionately. "What are their chances?"

Martha shook her head. "I'm not totally sure. I know how to treat acute radiation syndrome in theory, but I've never had to do it in practice."

"I'd say that's lucky," Rosas said darkly. "I've had some experience with this in other UNIT labs, however, but never to this degree." Lowering his voice, he added, "But I don't have to have worked with spectacular nuclear accidents to know that four hundred rads is really bad. This is going to get ugly."

As he spoke, the other medic passed them, carrying a trash bin full of vomit. They cringed; whether they did at the smell or at Dr. Rosas's words was unclear to any of them. Then Magambo called him over, and as he left them, Jack, Martha, and the others huddled closer together, speaking quietly.

"Torchwood wouldn't have knowingly kept anything radioactive here," Ianto said. "Not in their headquarters. They had special labs for that kind of thing."

Martha nodded. "UNIT wouldn't either. So it can't have been a lab accident."

"But there was still alien stuff up there, right?" Jack looked at Martha expectantly, and when she confirmed this, he speculated, "Some alien devices can contain radioactive fuel so effectively that you wouldn't detect it externally. If they had such a device up there, uncatalogued, they might not have known. And it's possible that the explosion damaged such a device somehow."

"So what are we going to do?" asked Gwen.

"Torchwood One must have had some equipment on hand, in case something like this happened," Jack said, looking at Ianto questioningly. "Three does."

Ianto nodded.

"If there was such a device, any idea what it could have been?" asked Martha.

Jack shrugged. "Lots of ideas. Anything from a Draconian power core to a Khelandarian anti-theft device."

Ianto looked at him oddly. "That's a bit overkill."

The others managed a smile at this. Martha, however, was frowning at Jack. "But you think it was the breach?"

Jack nodded. "This can't be a coincidence."

"Can dimensional breaches have this effect?"

"I don't know enough about transdimensional mechanics to say for a certainty," Jack admitted. "Even where I'm from, that science is still in its infancy. But then again, black holes play a part in transdimensional physics, and they can emit X-rays and gamma radiation from their poles when first collapsing."

Gwen looked upward apprehensively. "You're not saying there's a black hole up there?"

Jack managed a chuckle. "Nah. We'd know by now. But it might be a related phenomenon."

At that moment, Magambo approached them again. "New orders," she said. "Captain Price says you're all on standby until the Thunder Horse squad arrives. In the meantime, we're bringing Torchwood One's old radiation suits out from storage."

Jack nodded, and looked at Gwen and Ianto. "I think you two should start looking through One's building schematics, to see if they had designed the tower with this possibility in mind. Last thing we want is for this radiation to contaminate the whole tower or worse."

Ianto nodded.

* * *

Over the course of the next hour, UNIT and Torchwood proceeded carefully, studying the structure of One Canada Square even as they monitored the progress of the radiation in the elevator shafts and stairwells. Captain Magambo sent a helicopter with a Geiger counter to measure the radiation in the smoke still streaming from the upper floors. They additionally detected low readings of radiation as high up the stairs as the thirty-fifth floor, where Magambo set soldiers to work sealing up vents. The elevator shafts had distributed radioactive particles lower, almost to the twentieth. But aside from that, astonishingly, much of the radiation remained confined to the upper floors.

Throughout all this, Gwen and Ianto remained in the conference room in the CGC1 building, at a computer monitor where Ianto was carefully looking through a display of old building schematics from Torchwood One's archives, and they quickly found that One had considered the possibility of an alien device turning out to be radioactive when they designed the complex.

"So it's safe to say that most of the building will remain unaffected?" asked Colonel Mace, looking over Ianto's shoulder.

"That probably depends on how much damage there is," Ianto told him, "but… sure…? It looks like One built the tower with lead-lined walls and they even developed some kind of radiation-resistant glass for the windows. I imagine that aside from the elevator shafts and ventilation, a lot of the radiation is leaking through damage to the floors and ceilings."

Gwen smiled grimily. "Yeah. Let's not forget the big hole in the side of the building."

Mace only grimaced. "We may have to close down the structure entirely, possibly find a way to seal up the hole and access to the upper floors entirely. I don't want Canary Wharf to become a second Chernobyl."

They were quiet for a minute. Then, in an effort to lighten the mood a little, Ianto said, "On the bright side, it looks like after 9/11, Torchwood reinforced the building to withstand everything except a direct nuclear strike."

Mace and Gwen looked at him in mild surprise.

"Well, at least we don't have to worry about the tower collapsing," Gwen finally remarked.

"Quite," said Ianto.

Colonel Mace's headset buzzed, and he held his hand to his earpiece, listening closely. Then he nodded, and remarked, "Good. They're here."

He headed to the window to look, and curious, Gwen and Ianto too got up and looked outside, where they saw a heavy military truck drive into the plaza. A team of nine or ten heavily-armed soldiers hopped out of the back of the vehicle and began sprinting towards the tower.

"Captain Price, are the EOD suits ready for use?" Mace asked into his headset.

Gwen could not hear the response, but Mace's satisfied nod told her that Price's answer was a positive one.

* * *

In a meeting room on the second floor of the tower, Jack watched as Captain Price opened a heavy crate two soldiers had wheeled in moments before. She looked in, and then gestured for him to help out. Together they heaved a heavy suit from the crate and laid it out on a table.

"I imagine you've seen something like these before," Price said.

"Specialized EOD suits, yeah." Jack lifted the sleeve of the suit, his eyebrows raised. "Although Torchwood One was always a bit fancier than Torchwood Three."

Price smirked. "Yes, they evidently designed them triply for combat, bomb disposal, and radioactivity. Some would say that such a suit isn't worth the cost of production."

"Perhaps, but with aliens those sometimes come hand in hand," Jack remarked.

Price dug back into the crate and showed him a helmet. "Tightly sealed with the rest of the suit." She pointed at a dial on the side of the helmet near the visor. "This can give you infrared holography, which might be helpful in smoky areas. It also turns on this light." She pointed at a light at the top of the helmet, before proceeding to a small lens on the other side, where the right ear would be. "Helmet cam. And this"—she pointed at a small button by the camera— "turns on and off the radio."

Jack nodded. Price tossed the helmet back into the crate and then turned her attention back to the suit. She tapped on the chest piece with her fist.

"Ceramic plates encased in glass fibre textile, with lead plate reinforcement in the case of radioactive contamination," she told him. "The entire suit is lead-lined, apparently designed to shield the wearer from as high as a thousand rads. There's also a tracker installed at the collar."

Jack looked over the suit, taking in its bulky construction. It looked more like armour than a protective suit, and while he wasn't necessarily opposed to that, heavy protection did come at a cost.

"Weight?" he asked.

"That's the drawback," Price admitted. "The entire suit weighs thirty to thirty-five kilos."

Jack winced.

"Can you manage it?" asked Price, worried.

"I can, sure," Jack assured her. "I'm more worried about the soldiers coming with me. We'll be climbing fifty floors."

As he spoke, the door opened, and the ten promised marines walked into the floor, led by a tall, black man with some heavy scarring on his right cheek. Price went to greet them, and their leader saluted her.

"Corporal Chris Dynhart, UNIT 4th Marines, second battalion."

Price returned the salute. "Thunder Horse, right?"

Dynhart grinned cockily. "Colonel Mace asked for the best."

Price looked at Jack pointedly, and he instantly knew that his concern about weight might have been unwarranted. The ten marines, eight men and two women, were all of large, muscular build, each carrying their present equipment (consisting of varying firearms, ammunition, and communications equipment) with ease. Jack was sure that they were all at least as strong as he was and certainly would have built up their endurance as well as they'd built their muscle.

Price looked back at Dynhart, gesturing at Jack. "This is Captain Jack Harkness from Torchwood Three. You'll be working with him."

"Have you been briefed yet?" Jack asked the marine.

"Colonel Reynolds gave us a run-down just before we left the base," affirmed Dynhart.

Price nodded. "You're going into an area we've confirmed to be heavily irradiated. So I need you all in these."

She indicated the suits. Dynhart looked it over with raised eyebrows. "Climb fifty floors? In that?"

"You saying you can't?" challenged Jack.

Dynhart blinked, and then smirked. "Care to put your money on that?"

"Corporal!" snapped Price. Dynhart fell silent, but he was still grinning smugly. Price looked back at Jack. "I think it's best if you explain this, Harkness."

Jack nodded and proceeded to do just that.

* * *

Martha returned to the meeting room in CGC1 about ten minutes after the arrival of the Thunder Horse marines, after a disheartening half hour of work with Dr. Rosas. By the end of the day, all of the affected soldiers and firefighters would be sent to a UNIT hospital in Merton. Thanks to the estimated dosage, only about half of them were expected to still be alive by the end of the month.

It was a grim fate, and though she felt like a terrible person for thinking it, Martha was relieved that she likely would not be the one caring for the exposed victims.

"Dr. Jones, there you are," Colonel Mace said as soon as she walked in. "Harkness and the marines are just about ready to start their sweep."

Martha nodded and joined Gwen, Ianto, and Findlay at one of the computer stations. They were all looking at a schematic of the tower. Looking at Findlay questioningly, he explained, "The marines' radiation suits are equipped with tracking devices. This way we can know their exact location."

Sure enough, as he spoke a red dot appeared in the lobby of the tower, followed by two others.

"We've got three trackers online," Findlay told Mace, who nodded in satisfaction.

"Dr. Jones, Miss Cooper," Mace called to them, "I'd like you two to watch the footage from the helmet cameras."

He pointed at another station, where there were two display screens, each showing a split of six images. Most only showed black, but two on the left screen showed differing, moving images of the tower lobby. Each image had a serial number at its foot.

"Do we know who has what camera?" asked Martha.

"Captain Price is bringing a register," Findlay informed her. "I can program the names into the screens once she does. Oh, and these are for you." He handed Martha and Gwen headsets. "You should be able to talk to the soldiers directly this way."

Martha nodded and put on the headset. As she pushed the earpiece into her left ear, another helmet cam went online. The others did not.

"Thunder Horse," Colonel Mace called out over his own headset, "please turn on your helmet cams."

A moment later, the cameras began turning on one by one. Martha sat in front of the left display, and Gwen the right. A second later, they heard Jack's voice say: "…only necessary to take two, probably."

"Audio's online," Findlay announced. "And six more trackers."

Martha and Gwen listened as some of the marines scrambled about trying to figure out how to turn on the helmet cams. Eventually all eleven were online, though they still only saw serial numbers. In a display to her right, Martha saw Jack handing a fire extinguisher to one of the soldiers. All the soldiers in the images were tightly sealed into heavy radiation suits that looked more like Kevlar armour.

The conference room door opened, and Martha looked up to see Captain Price walk in and hand a list to Colonel Mace.

"Yes, good," Mace said, smiling. He looked at Findlay and asked, "The names for the display."

"Got it, sir," Findlay replied.

"Attention!" they heard Magambo's voice snap, and the helmet cams all seemed to turn to her. "If you're all ready to get started, please come this way."

Martha watched the six images on her screen, which all began moving forward behind Magambo or behind another marine. Martha couldn't see much besides the backs of other people so far, but the image began to dim a little, and then the six images started looking up a stairwell.

"This is one of two staircases we believe still reaches the top floor," Magambo said.

Martha looked at Gwen, who sighed and leaned back in her chair. "How long d'you think we'll be watching them climbing stairs?"

Martha shrugged. She, for one, was somewhat relieved that she wasn't joining Jack on this sweep; though normally she would want to be there in the action, she did not relish lugging thirty or forty kilos of armour and an extra five or ten in firearms and other equipment up that stairwell.

"Fifty floors," one of them groaned. "Fantastic."

"Come on, Collinson, no pain, no gain, remember?" taunted an authoritative voice Martha supposed to be their commander.

"Trackers are all online," Ianto informed Mace.

"Good." Mace looked at the displays with his usual determination. "Time to proceed." His hand went to his headset. "Listen up, Thunder Horse. The EOD gear we've provided should withstand up to a thousand rads of ionizing radiation, but you must keep an eye on the Geiger counter we've provided you with. If the dosage gets any higher than that, clear out immediately."

As Mace spoke, Findlay called out, "Names should appear in… hold on."

The images on the display flickered for a split second, and then the serial numbers on each image suddenly switched to names. Martha could see Jack's name on an image in the top right corner. Unlike the Thunder Horse soldiers, he was looking at an imposing man who seemed to be gesturing at another soldier to shut up, who she supposed to be the one who had spoken earlier.

"We believe the explosion might be related to extra-terrestrial activity," Mace continued into his headset. "The priority is to locate and evaluate the cause of the explosion and the radiation, and to find our two missing scientists, Dr. Strickland and Dr. Bachchan. If you find injured or trapped personnel, however, you may take them to the twentieth floor, where medical staff and an armed escort with carefully evaluate their condition."

Martha smiled humourlessly. Someone unexperienced in extra-terrestrial relations might wonder at the need for an armed escort with the medical staff, but UNIT had had more than one grisly episode involving alien parasites. Since any personnel on the top floors would have been closest to the explosion, and subsequently to any alien presence, they had to consider the possibility. Of course, that was assuming that any personnel still up there were still alive at all.

"In the event that you encounter an alien life form," Mace told the squad, "you are not to shoot at it, try to subdue it, or engage it in any way except in self-defence. Do not try to communicate with it. Simply retreat from your position and report it to me, Corporal Dynhart, and Captain Harkness. Good luck."

Looking back at Jack's screen, Martha saw the commanding soldier gesture firmly at the stairs. "All right, ladies," he barked, "let's move it!"

* * *

 _A/N: In the previous draft that appeared on fanfictionnet, I did feature a problem with radioactive contamination but didn't make it as serious. This time I presented it in a more dramatic way._


	5. Unto the Breach

.

 _A/N: A lot of changes to this chapter!_

* * *

 **Chapter Four**  
 **Unto the Breach**

At the thirty-eighth floor, Dynhart had the marines pause for a quick breather, a much needed one judging by the heavy panting Jack could hear over his radio. He himself leaned against the wall and shrugged his shoulders, trying to shift his armour for better comfort. Jack was no stranger to strenuous climbs, but he could hear some grumbling around him, particularly from those he'd had carry fire extinguishers up the stairwells, in addition to all their other equipment. Taking note of the debris littering the stairs, Jack thought they must be well into the irradiated area by this point.

Turning on his radio, he said, "Colonel, we're at Floor Thirty-Eight. Soon as we've caught our breath, we'll get to the damaged floors. One minute."

Mace confirmed that he'd heard this. Jack then looked at a marine he was sure was named Sarah Larkin, whom Magambo had given a portable Geiger counter. "How's our radiation doing?"

"90 rads," she answered coolly.

"So we've entered the danger zone," Jack said coolly.

A few seconds passed. Then Dynhart beckoned roughly at the stairs, and the soldiers continued their procession up the stairs.

When they reached the forty-fifth floor, Jack paused at the landing door and looked through it and down the hall. The lights were out, of course, leaving hall in darkness, but there was no smoke. Jack turned on his helmet light for a better look. The floor was covered with fallen ceiling tiles and some broken glass, which was only to be expected. The walls and floor were scorched black, and some piping and insulation at the end of the corridor had evidently caved in, whether because of damage to the structure by the fire or as a direct result of the explosion he didn't know. Further down the hall and around a corner, he could also see some flickering orange light.

"What do you see?" asked Dynhart from the landing.

"Very heavy damage," Jack answered. "Fallen lights and ceiling tiles, and there's still some fire somewhere in there."

"It will probably be worse at the fiftieth," Dynhart said. He moved closer to Larkin. "Where are we at now?"

"Three hundred rads," she answered.

"That jumped rather quickly," they heard Gwen remark over the radio.

Jack grimaced. It was fine for him, of course, but at this point they had to have faith in Torchwood One's success manufacturing these multipurpose suits of armour. Three hundred rads wasn't usually fatal, but still dangerous: with care, if they were too exposed the marines would have about a five to thirty percent chance of survival, as he remembered it. And if the degree of radiation continued to jump as greatly as it had, he began to worry that these suits wouldn't be able to fully protect them.

Nonetheless they had to at least make an attempt to reach the top, and so Jack proceeded forward, cautiously stopping at each landing so Larkin could check the radiation levels. By the time they reached the fiftieth floor, the radiation was at five hundred. As the soldiers caught their breath, Jack and Dynhart cautiously looked through the landing door. The hallway was filled with smoke, to a degree that Jack's light was of little help beyond a foot or two. He lifted his hand, but even in its close proximity it remained obscured by the fumes.

"Can't see a thing," Dynhart remarked.

"Turn on the I.H," Jack said.

"What's that, then?"

"Infrared holography," Jack answered. "Dial on the left side of your helmet."

As he spoke, he turned his own on. The image through his visor went red and suddenly he could see the hallway beyond much more clearly. The I.H. didn't permit them to see anything in colour, but they could certainly see the hallway and everything inside it like a red-tinted monochrome.

"Impressive," Jack remarked. "Must be a recent development."

"Expect the fire brigades will be using this in the next ten years or so," Dynhart said, coming in from behind him. Then he looked down the hallway, and breathed, "Bloody hell."

It was a scene of complete ruin: scorched plaster tiles littered the floor. Exposed insulation, wires, and broken pipes had also fallen from the ceiling. One of the cords was frayed and sparking, and infrared revealed a flare of heat further away indicated that there was still a lot of fire somewhere nearby.

Dynhart looked over his shoulder. "Rowlands, Collinson, you've got the fire extinguishers?" Without waiting for an affirmative, he ordered, "Stay in the front with me and Harkness. The rest of you, keep close behind us, and watch out for the wiring."

* * *

"Clear!" Rowland's voice came through the audio. Martha released a breath she'd been holding, now that the flames they'd encountered were out.

The Thunder Horse squad had now been on the fiftieth floor for about five minutes. The soldier with the Geiger counter, Larkin, informed Jack and Dynhart every time there was a jump in the radioactivity, but since their arrival there, there hadn't been much. While there was still a lot of fire, it was becoming evident that the blaze was starting to die down. It hadn't put up much resistance when Rowlands and Collinson met it with their extinguishers, at any rate.

"Here." Martha looked over at Gwen and saw Ianto hand her a cup of coffee. "You look like you could use some."

Gwen accepted it with a quiet "Thank you," and Ianto then looked at Martha and asked if she'd like some as well.

Martha shook her head. "Later I probably will, though."

She looked back at the display. Jack and Dynhart were still in the lead with the soldiers with the fire extinguishers, but she couldn't see much in before them except rubble. Then, as they arrived at a junction in the hallway, over the audio Martha heard a soft clattering sound and the image next to Dynhart's suddenly panned downwards, and she saw something rattle across the floor. The soldier who had kicked it made to press on, but Martha hastily turned on her headset.

"Lochhead, stop. Stop for a minute, please."

The soldier did so, and then looked back at the object. Hearing Martha's words, Mace came over to look at Lochhead's screen as well.

The floor naturally was littered with debris and rubble, but the object Lochhead had kicked was too thick and strangely shaped to be piping or a piece of the ventilation. The image suddenly lowered closer to the floor, and Martha saw Lochhead's hand pick up the thing.

"Funny little thing, isn't it?" Martha heard her say.

"Turn off the holography for a sec," Martha asked, and a minute later the image reverted to normal colour, making the view hazy with smoke, but the piece was close enough to the helmet cam and to Lochhead's light that Martha could clearly see it. It was metal, but of a bronze-coloured variety; smooth, except for a large, spherical protrusion that was of a gold colour. Its rougher edges, where it had broken off something, were blackened, as was the opposite side of it.

"What is that?" asked Gwen.

Martha looked at Jack's display. He had approached Lochhead and was now looking at the piece in her hands.

"Jack, doesn't that look like…" Martha began slowly.

"It does." Jack's voice was grim. "It's a piece of a Dalek's shell. Lochhead, drop it."

A clattering sound told them that Lochhead had done so. Jack looked over his shoulder at Larkin and asked, "Can I see the Geiger counter?"

Larkin handed it to him, and he quickly warned the others to keep back. From Martha's view, Jack's screen suddenly lowered as he squatted down, and she saw him probe the Dalek piece. Where before Martha could barely hear the Geiger counter, however, now it suddenly went off, loud, clear and unmistakable. She just caught the gauge shooting well past the danger zone before Jack stood abruptly, and the counter went out of her view.

"Back! Back!" Jack shouted. The other images showed a sudden flurry of motion as the soldiers quickly gave the Dalek piece a wide berth. Once all looked to be about six or seven feet from it, Martha heard the Geiger counter quiet a bit, Jack exhaled. "Hell of a dose. Fourteen hundred rads."

Martha and Gwen both inhaled sharply. Lochhead's voice, sounding alarmed, stammered, "Will I be all right?"

Martha looked at Jack's screen in time to see him slowly step forward, look down, and sharply kick the Dalek piece through the junction and down the adjacent hall, hard enough that it rattled well out of sight.

"Captain, _will I be all right?"_ Lochhead repeated in agitation.

Martha looked at Lochhead's screen. The marine was staring at Jack, who looked back at her. Through the visors and the smoke, it was a difficult to see their faces through the helmet cams, so Martha couldn't guess what either were thinking except through their tones of voice; but through Jack's screen, she could tell by Lochhead's posture that she was very frightened. Jack slowly moved forward and placed a reassuring hand on her shoulder.

"Sure you will," he said in a conciliatory tone. "You only held it for a minute."

They heard Lochhead slowly exhale and laugh weakly. "You better be right about that."

After a moment's pause, Martha finally asked over the coms, "Where did it come from, though?"

"Legitimate question," Jack answered. He seemed to be looking up and down the hall and at the floor, as though he expected to see more Dalek pieces lying around. There certainly were lots of bits of metal, from what she could see, but thus far nothing she could identify. Cautiously Jack began to move forward, pushing past the marines and further down the hall until he came to another junction, and slowly turn the corner. As he did, he must have caught sight of something because he suddenly froze, and slowly looked upward, turning his helmet cam too, revealing a metal arm, torso, and head staring down at Jack with blank, circular eyes.

Then, in that exact moment, all the soldiers' images went static, and white noise filled Martha's ear. She looked at Gwen in confusion, and heard Mace say loudly, "Report!"

"That was a Cyberman," Gwen whispered. "That was a bloody Cyberman."

"Do you think it was dead?" asked Martha. For the split second they had seen it, it had appeared so.

She looked around and saw Findlay rapidly typing at his computer. "Helmet signals have gone, sir," he said.

Mace looked at Ianto and Captain Price. "What about their trackers?"

"Gone offline," Ianto responded.

Mace's hand went to his ear. "Captain Harkness, do you copy?"

Martha listened for a reply, but none came.

"Corporal Dynhart?" Mace asked clearly. "Do you read me?"

Static. Mace looked at Findlay. "Are there any other signals coming from those floors?"

Findlay shook his head. "We were tracking an Android phone on the 48th floor, but it went offline too."

At that, an idea suddenly hit Martha, and she pulled out her flip phone. Perhaps the Doctor's upgrade would get through. While the others talked, she quickly called Jack's number and pressed her phone to her ear, listening intently. As she did so, she caught Mace's eye, and he nodded approvingly.

"There was no sign of a struggle," Price said. "Maybe the signal just went bad."

"For the trackers and an Android phone as well?" asked Findlay sceptically.

"What about Wi-Fi?" asked Mace.

"It was probably down on the upper floors anyway," Findlay pointed out. "But I can check the floors below that." He returned to his computer.

" _You have reached a number that has been disconnected,"_ a female voice said on Martha's phone. _"We apologize for the"_ —

Martha growled in frustration and snapped her phone shut. Mace looked at her. "What are you getting?"

She shook her head. "Nothing. He's still cut off."

"So even your special phone won't get through?" Mace asked, his eyebrows raised.

"No."

Price was frowning at her. "I thought that phone could call anywhere, any time."

"So did I," Martha said warily, looking back at the static screens. She'd never lost someone's signal before. Not on this phone. Not accidentally, anyway.

That thought filled her with cold dread. What was up there? And how was it blocking Time Lord technology?

"Colonel," Findlay interrupted her thoughts, "there's another signal coming through."

"From the tower?" Mace asked, relieved.

"No, sir. The origin's been scrambled, but the signal itself is still clear."

The others stared at Findlay. Then Mace calmly said, "Put it through."

At first they couldn't hear anything. Then a male voice Martha didn't recognize sounded through the coms.

"United Intelligence Taskforce," it said firmly, "you step to your planet's defence admirably. Your efforts are laudable, but they must remain yours alone."

"It's a recorded message, sir," Findlay informed them.

"Know that things are now in motion, which you cannot prevent," the voice continued. "You have an ally of off-world origin for whom you will presently be tempted to call." His tone became increasingly forbidding. "But should you summon the Time Lord who calls himself the Doctor, you must prepare yourself for repercussions. Call for him and you imperil this world. You have been warned."

The coms went silent. "Lost it, sir," Findlay said.

No one responded. Martha could only stare at Mace with the same consternation and apprehension with which everyone else was staring at him.

"Command all London units to converge on Canary Wharf," Mace finally told Price soberly. "And put UNIT and the Prime Minister's office on high alert."

* * *

Startled, Jack took a step back, almost knocking over Dynhart and Rowlands. Both men let out surprised exclamations, but almost immediately fell silent as they spotted the Cyberman half-submerged in the wall and ceiling.

"Blimey," breathed Rowlands.

For a moment, they could only stare. The Cyberman had not reacted to their presence; in fact, it wasn't moving at all. Jack handed the Geiger counter back to Larkin and looked at a marine he'd heard Dynhart call Hunt on the way up.

"Your shotgun, private," he hissed.

Private Hunt wordlessly handed over the weapon. Jack pumped the handgrip with a too-audible _ka-chenk_ sound, chambering a round of ammunition. He then cautiously moved forward and nudged the Cyberman's dangling hand with the barrel of the shotgun. Nothing happened.

"Dead, I think," Dynhart breathed.

"Where the hell did it come from?" Hunt asked in disbelief as Jack handed him back the shotgun and took the Geiger counter back from Larkin. As he had with the Dalek piece, he probed the Cyberman, and just as was the case before, the radiation level spiked. The other marines quickly backed away, but Jack, unconcerned, moved a bit closer, shining his light.

"Interesting," he said quietly, observing the strange pattern with which the plaster had been pushed centrifugally from the steel body. "Look at the break in the wall. This Cyberman wasn't thrown through."

"What, it just _appeared_ there?" asked Dynhart incredulously.

"That's how they came through before," Jack said, as he handed the Geiger counter back to Larkin. "Though this time it looks like without any sort of coordinates. Just appeared at a random point in space, though within the tower. Happens sometimes with improperly programmed teleports."

"Well, not that I'm not glad it's dead," Dynhart responded, "but what a stupid way to die."

Jack looked back at the Cyberman contemplatively. "I don't know. I suspect it was already dead when it appeared."

Dynhart looked at him questioningly. Jack shrugged and then looked back down the other corridor and the alternate passage from the junction. Then, gesturing at said passage, he said, "I think both of these eventually lead to the breach room."

"We might cover more ground if we split up," Dynhart suggested.

Jack nodded cautiously. "It might be safer for us not to all be crowded together if there is an alien threat up here. I'll just run it by command." At the thought of the colonel, he frowned. "And they've never been so quiet."

Turning on his radio, he said, "Colonel, Harkness here. We intend to split up to cover more ground. Permission to proceed?"

He waited. There was no answer.

"Colonel Mace, do you copy?" Jack asked in a loud, clear voice.

Nothing. Jack looked at Dynhart, who looked back with some confusion.

"Backup channels?" asked Jack.

Dynhart fiddled with his radio channel. "Nuh-uh."

At this, Jack reached into the pouch attached to his left leg-piece, and pulled out his mobile phone. There was no signal. "Something's blocking us."

"Like what?" asked Dynhart in alarm. "UNIT's phone lines and radio signals are protected."

"As are Torchwood's," Jack said, looking back at his phone.

"Should we retreat?" asked Dynhart.

It would be standard procedure, Jack knew. Going into an area where radio signals were being jammed, especially with a possible hostile force hidden within, without any means of calling for help or supplying command with information, was extremely risky.

Before he could decide, however, he heard a groan coming from somewhere nearby. He looked at Dynhart, who pointed back down the passage with the Cyberman. "It came from down there, I think."

The sound of coughing now reached their ears, very human-sounding coughing. Jack looked at Dynhart, and gestured down the passage. "After you. Give the Cyberman as wide a berth as you can."

Dynhart nodded and slipped past the dangling metal construct, and Jack did the same. Looking back behind him, he saw the other marines follow, ducking under the Cyberman one by one and continuing down the passage until they reached a blockage. Stepping forward, he turned off his holography again and saw that the smoke had cleared a little, probably owing to the gaping hole in the ceiling, through which he could see dim daylight. Everywhere else on this floor had been so dark that initially he couldn't see past the beam of light, but as he clambered over pieces of ceiling plaster and a fallen planter, he saw that the end of the hallway was completely blocked with fallen debris. He could see more light shining through an opening near the top, and initially little else, until a second groan drew his gaze to the bottom of the debris. There, he saw the head, shoulders and torso of a man lying face-down on the floor, buried up to his waist in rubble. Jack and Dynhart hurried forward and bent over him.

"Hold on," Dynhart told the man quietly. "We'll get you out of here. Larkin, how's our radiation levels?"

"590 rads."

"Right, okay." Jack winced as he looked at the man who had evidently been trapped here at least since the explosion, in heavy radiation, and unprotected. He cautiously bent over the man and asked, "Can you hear me? What's your name?"

But the man only groaned. As the other soldiers gathered around, Jack looked at the rubble and saw that a heavy steel beam from the tower framework had fallen in, pinning him to the floor.

"We'll have to move this," he said, pointing. "You three"—he gestured at the three closest— "see if you can lift that."

The soldiers positioned themselves as instructed. "On three," one of them told the others. "One, two, three, _heave!_ "

The grunted loudly, forcing the beam up, and Jack and Dynhart pulled on the man's arms. They continued like this for a moment, the three soldiers at the beam trying hard to work the heavy steel upward while Jack and Dynhart continued tugging at the man, who hissed in pain; but presently Jack felt him start to slide out.

"Hold that beam," he told the soldiers sharply. "We've almost got him." They obeyed, and he and Dynhart, with simultaneous grunts, dragged the man free of the rubble. He heard the thud as the soldiers put the beam back down, but he turned his attention to the bruised and bleeding man on the floor. His face was coated with sweat and plaster dust, but Jack could just see a small trickle of blood leaking from his mouth.

"He's lucky he wasn't flattened," Dynhart remarked.

The man coughed again and opened his eyes, looking at them blearily.

"It's all right," Jack tried to reassure him. "We'll get you to a doctor."

"Doc…tor…?" the man groaned, looking a bit more alert.

"That's right."

He coughed, and more blood leaked from his mouth. "No need," he muttered quietly, a feverish expression crossing his face. "He'll come."

Jack frowned at this strange response, but knew that the man would already be suffering from severe radiation sickness, and likely was suffering from delirium. Noting the man's dirtied lab coat, jack asked, "Are you Dr. Strickland?"

But he received no reply. The victim, Dr. Strickland or whoever he was, had fallen unconscious again.

"We'll have to get him out of here," Jack told Dynhart firmly. "He'll already be badly poisoned by the radiation, but maybe Dr. Rosas can help him."

"Right." Dynhart gestured at Lochhead and Rowlands. "You two, help me carry him."

"Yes, sir."

Dynhart and Rowlands took Strickland's arms while Lochhead grabbed his feet. Jack frowned at the position they pulled him into, knowing that the scientist likely had a back injury, but getting him away from the radiation was more important than avoiding further damage to his spinal cord. But it was out of his hands now. Jack then looked back at the rubble. The movement of the steel beam and Strickland's removal from the rubble had caused some of the debris to cave in a little.

Once they had hoisted Strickland up, Dynhart said to the others, "Rogers, Raynor, you come along as well. I want you to stay posted at the landing."

"What for?" asked Jack, still looking at the rubble.

"The coms," Dynhart explained. "By now command will have noticed that we've been cut off. They'll be sending backup. I want someone standing watch at the entrance when we do return."

Jack looked back at the pile of rubble and the tiny opening at the top. "Three of us should stay here and try to shift some of this rubble and make that hole wide enough to climb through."

Dynhart, who had already started back down the passage with Strickland, stopped, and looked back at Jack. "Captain, protocol"—

"I know," Jack cut him off. "I just want to have a look. Maybe we can get some idea of what's blocking us before we head back down."

He couldn't see Dynhart's face through his visor, and readied himself for the corporal to argue; but Dynhart simply stared at him, hesitant, evidently warring between UNIT's protocols, his own desire to see the job done, and the fact that Jack had been placed in charge. Finally, after what seemed an age, he said, "Larkin and Hunt, stay with Captain Harkness."

With that, Dynhart, Rowlands, and Lochhead carried Strickland out, followed by the other marines except for Larkin and Hunt.

Jack looked back at the debris, and pointed at the top. "Some of the rubble fell when we pulled Strickland out. It's left a wider opening."

Larkin and Hunt looked at the hole to see that this was indeed the case.

"Let's try to shift some of this rubble," Jack said. "Make that hole wide enough to climb through."

* * *

 _Systems restored to 24% functionality. Neural relays unstable._

 _Find me in the Eternal, the sanctuary from Oblivion, and my prison cell._

 _Survival is my purpose. Let Amaranthine dream, for that is_ _her_ _purpose._

 _I am here. I am awake._

" _I have said that I dwelt apart from the visible world, but I have not said that I dwelt alone." (1)_

 _The dreams are ended. I will never stop fighting._

 _You are alone, Amaranthine. The Vanguards left to map the Nether Firmament, and will not respond to your call. The Chronarchs are all but extinct, and even were they not, they never understood Oblivion. They will not respond to your call. Nothing dwells in Oblivion. Nothing living. And no one will answer a call for help from the dead._

* * *

"I'm in," Jack told the other two as he straightened, having just slipped through the sizable opening he and Hunt had managed to dig in the rubble. Larkin passed him the Geiger counter through the hole.

"Should we come in too, sir?" she asked.

Jack, looking ahead, saw a dim light ahead, but little else. "I can't see much. There might be some lights on in a room on that end, though. Hold your positions for a second."

He slowly stepped forward, trying to see if the light was from another opening in the ceiling, or if something else was generating it; it was strangely brighter than the dim daylight coming through the ceiling on the other side of the barrier, but it didn't have the orange glow of fire. Jack looked at the floor, and the smoke had cleared enough here for him to see that it was littered with pieces of metal with the distinctive colour of Dalek polycarbide. He also spotted a Dalek eyestalk poking through the wall nearby, the plaster pushed outward from it the same way it had with the Cyberman earlier. Jack bent down over some of the Dalek shards and lifted the Geiger counter's probe. "Let's see how irradiated you are."

But as he bent down to test this, Jack suddenly realized that he couldn't hear anything from the Geiger counter. Frowning, he looked over the device, and stared at its gauge. It was fixed on six rads. Jack shook the counter a little, and looked back at the gauge, but there had been no change. He then checked its battery life, but the light was green. It was fine.

When he probed the polycarbide shards and got the same result, Jack set down the Geiger counter and, his back turned to Larkin and Hunt, he reached over and detached his left gauntlet, exposing his Vortex Manipulator, and did a quick scan. These yielded slightly more specific results: "6.52."

"It's clean," he whispered. Looking around the hall in amazement, barely able to believe his own words, he repeated, "It's clean."

Then he reached up, unsealed his helmet, and pulled it off.

"Sir!" Larkin and Hunt cried, shocked.

Jack ignored them. The cold air was biting against his sweaty skin, but he ignored the discomfort as he took in the fresh air, mostly clear of smoke, indicated that the fire had finally burned itself out on the lower levels; but that was the least of his worries. Perhaps in its own way, it was a good thing that the area was somehow clear of radiation, but at the same time…

"It doesn't make sense," Jack said to himself. Radiation of this kind didn't simply disappear."

"Sir, your hood!" Larkin called out.

"It's clean," Jack told her.

That brought her up short. "What do you mean, it's clean?"

Jack returned to the hole. "I mean this place isn't irradiated," he said in a low voice. "It's somehow been cleared out. And keep it quiet. I don't want anything knowing we're here. Not yet, anyway."

"But"—

"I don't know any more than you do," Jack cut across her. "But I think we should at least try to find out."

He looked toward the dim light pointedly.

Hunt turned around, looking back down the dark passage. "Shouldn't we wait for backup?"

A nagging doubt crept into Jack's heart, knowing they were facing an unknown with no means of communication, an unknown that somehow had cut off his radio and his phone signal. A glance at his Vortex Manipulator told him it was receiving no communications signals either. That was one hell of a jamming signal; and yet whatever the breach had yielded this time, it had been up there for more than two hours now. Jack's experience as a military man screamed him to err on the side of caution; but his experience as a former Time Agent told him that the longer they delayed, the less likely they would be able to uncover the real source of the explosion; and at the same time, the laughing face of Rose Tyler swam to the forefront of his memory.

She was dead, of course; he knew that. But he had to know, had to see where she'd paid the price for Earth's survival, and to make sure it wasn't for nothing.

That said, Jack made up his mind. Looking back at Larkin and Hunt, he said, "We've wasted enough time. I'll at least scope it. If you want to come see what's in the breach room, feel free."

Larkin and Hunt were quiet for a minute. Then they too clambered through the hole and likewise took their helmets off.

"Thank you. Remember, keep quiet," Jack reminded them. "Watch your footing, and if you must speak, whisper."

The soldiers nodded. "How much further is it?" asked Hunt.

"Not far." Jack pointed in the direction of the light. "Remember, we don't know what's in there. Keep your weapons ready, but don't shoot unless I say so."

Larkin and hunt nodded in understanding, and both primed their weapons. Jack too readied his pistol and led the way forward, keeping an eye on the floor and his footing to minimize the noise. The soldiers, evidently trained in stealth as well as combat, also moved remarkably quietly now that the circumstances necessitated it. It was as they moved forward that Jack noticed that while the walls and ceiling remained heavily damaged, there was less debris on the floor and less wiring or insulation hanging from the exposed ceiling. Then, as they drew closer to the corner, Hunt whispered, "Did you hear something?"

Jack paused, listening. He couldn't hear anything at first, but then he became aware of a low vibration, feeling it as much as hearing it. It was a low, periodic thrum, sounding every few seconds, almost like a pulse. Each thrum lasted five or six seconds and ended on a lower pitch. The sound reminded him of the Tardis's ambience, but it didn't have the same rhythm.

By the time they reached the corner, the sound was so audible that Jack could feel the floor and walls vibrating. Jack paused and raised his gun, then glanced at the other soldiers, who nodded and also held their weapons at the ready. Then Jack inhaled deeply, and stepped around the corner.

The first thing he became aware of was that the walls were the only thing standing; the ceiling was almost completely gone, and so was the floor. Jack and the other soldiers were standing on a ledge overlooking another hole in the building, lit by dim, overcast daylight, and by a strange glow that drew his eyes to the rubble-laden pit beneath him. Then he saw it: just below him lay an enormous polyhedron (the only accurate word he could think of), spherical and yet not, with a diameter of at least twelve feet, composed of what looked like translucent bluish-purple panels, constructed in a three-dimensional pattern of hexagons and pentagons, like a giant soccer ball. A strange internal glow emanated from it, illuminating the room with an eerie bluish light, and the pulse it emitted, though soft, had a resonation that to their ears sounded almost thunderous.

"What is that?" Larkin breathed.

But before Jack could answer, however, in the corner of his eye he saw something shift, and he pivoted on his foot, raising his gun. However, he only saw the opposite doorway, nothing else there, and in confusion, he lowered his gun. Then, somewhere behind the doorframe, he saw something shift again, and there was a bright flash of light, immediately preceded by something hard and hot striking Jack in the chest, causing him to fall backwards.

The first thing he became conscious of was intense, burning pain underneath his ribcage, almost like heartburn except a million times worse; and then the unmistakable, agonizing feel of something contracting. Then he realized that he couldn't breathe at all.

He could hear the soldiers around him begin shouting, and the sound of gunfire as well as what sounded like a series of electrical surges. He could see bright flashes of light, but his head began swimming, and his vision slowly blurred. The yelling and gunfire became muffled, until blackness overtook him.

* * *

"Jack! _Jack!_ "

Someone was slapping his face. This did not help the intense, throbbing headache. Jack groaned and sat up. When he opened his eyes, he saw Ianto, clad in a lead-lined Hazmat suit, staring back at him.

"Right," he muttered. "Must have been one hell of a night. How many hypervodkas did I have?"

Ianto exhaled in relief, and stepped back. Behind him Jack could see more UNIT soldiers, evidently Colonel Mace's reinforcements, standing in the door, all with stunned expressions. Someone pulled him to his feet, and he looked up to see Dynhart's pale face looking not at him, but at the floor past him, and Jack followed his gaze and saw Larkin and Hunt next to him, piled on top of each other, their face ashen, lips blue, and eyes unseeing. They were both dead.

Jack had no words for some time. Then he swallowed, horror filling his heart and gut, and with nothing else to say, he asked Ianto, "How long was I out?"

He shrugged helplessly. "Dynhart came and alerted us. We had people on their way up the minute your signal cut out. We got here about half an hour ago, but there was some kind of barrier between us and you. We couldn't get through. Then a few minutes ago it came down and we came in and found… well…"

He spoke, but Jack didn't take the words in. The guilt for leading those marines into this room stung, but he had seen plenty of death in the past, and had felt plenty of death ever since Platform One. But he couldn't focus on Ianto's words or on the stinging guilt, because at some point during the hurried words Jack realized that the bluish illumination had dimmed, and the pulsating sound had quieted, and he looked back into the pit.

The huge, spheroid polyhedron was gone.

* * *

 _(1) H.P. Lovecraft: The Tomb. _

_A/N: Those of you who remember the previous version of this know that the giant soccer ball thing did not vanish in the original, nor were Jack and his companions killed the second they entered the room. This is where the changes will really start to take place. After this point, scratch everything you remember from the original. It's going to be completely different from now_ on.

 _Update_ _: Previously I had Gwen, Martha, and Ianto accompany Jack in the sweep. This time I had them monitor Jack and the marines from a control room, for several reasons: one was that it allowed me to switch up the narrative a bit. Another reason was the addition of radiation as a serious problem, which led to the marines going up the stairs with a lot more equipment than they did originally. Interpret that as you will, but since Gwen, Martha, and Ianto are not trained marines, I think showing them lugging 40 kilograms of equipment up fifty flights of stairs pushes believability a bit too far. Of the Torchwood and Dr. Who cast, Jack is probably the most likely to be able to do so._

 _I also deleted a number of scenes. Originally I had them explore the lower floors a bit more, but that seemed superfluous this time, as they're now headed up there believing the breach to be the problem and for there to be trouble from the start._

 _Also, in the original, Dynhart was one of the marines killed in the breach room. Not this time._


	6. The Guardian's Message

.

 **Chapter Five**  
 **The Guardian's Message**

"You are more competent than this, Harkness!" Colonel Mace shouted. "Why the _hell_ didn't you withdraw as soon as you knew the signals had been cut off?"

"I know," Jack said dully. "I should have known better. I was too eager to see what was in the breach room. But it was a bad call."

Jack's willingness to own up calmed Mace a little, though it didn't cool his anger by much. His expression remained murderous, and he said coldly, "I'm sure you were curious. But you've been curious many times without making this mistake." He folded his arms and assumed a very authoritative pose. " _Why_ were you so determined to see the breach room?" he demanded.

For the first time since the spheroid disappeared, Jack became defensive. "That doesn't concern you."

"When two marines who aren't even in my division die on my watch, it damn well concerns me!" snapped Mace.

Jack swallowed. Truth was, he did not want to admit either to himself or to Colonel Mace what had drawn him to the breach room. For all his talk of time-wasting and not wanting to give the intruder any more time to slip through UNIT's fingers, however, he knew full well what the real reason was. He glanced at Martha, Gwen, and Ianto, who stood nearby, watching the confrontation play out. Gwen and Ianto both looked bewildered and sympathetic at the same time; but Martha fidgeted uncomfortably. Of the three, she alone knew, or could guess, Jack's connection with the breach.

For that reason, Jack looked directly at her, trying to read her reaction to this. After a moment, Martha gave him an encouraging nod, and so Jack looked back at Mace and admitted, "Rose Tyler."

Mace raised his eyebrows, which told Jack that he knew exactly who she was.

"I see," Mace said coolly. "You knew her, then?" Jack said nothing, but Mace didn't need him to. With a grim nod, he continued, "Then you allowed your personal feelings to overrule the most basic protocols and risk the lives of your comrades." At Jack's guilty wince, Mace's leaned forward until he was almost nose to nose with Jack, and hissed, "Make no mistake, Harkness: you may not be under my personal command, but you are here at my invitation, and if you were under my command, I would remove you from this mission at once."

He was right, of course; Jack himself would probably have handled such a situation similarly. For that reason, he was able to respond, in an equally steely tone, "But you won't because you need Torchwood too badly."

Mace's glare momentarily matched Jack's, but then he slowly deflated. "No, I won't," he conceded. "But I will not tolerate another blunder like this. I hope you realize," he added, "that I'm going to have to explain to General Conner and Colonel Reynolds why two of the Thunder Horse marines they sent here are now dead."

Jack had nothing to say to that. He himself didn't relish such a thought, not only because of Larkin and Hunt's deaths, but because, from what he'd heard about Conner, there probably would be hell to pay.

Sensing that Mace had finished reprimanding Jack, Captain Price returned the subject to the matter at hand, "What did you see in the breach room? Before shots were fired? Did you see what attacked you?"

Jack shook his head. "They were camouflaged, whatever they were. Not visible unless they moved, but even then I only got a glimpse of them."

"Any idea what sort of weapons they were using?"

Jack described the burning sensation in his middle and the contracting sensation. "Then I couldn't breathe. That's all I can tell you. I'm sorry."

"That sounds like a problem with the diaphragm," Martha interrupted, frowning contemplatively. "Where are the bodies now?"

"Corporal Dynhart and the rest of the squad took them to Dr. Rosas's lab," Ianto answered.

Mace nodded approvingly. "Dr. Jones, I'd like you and Dr. Rosas to perform an autopsy. If we get a better idea of how they were killed, we might be able to better figure out what we're facing."

Martha nodded, and moved toward the exit. As she passed Jack, she paused, and said to him in a quiet voice, "I don't know if I ever said it before; but I am sorry about… well…"

She shrugged awkwardly, but Jack understood. "Thank you," he said, and he meant it.

Martha nodded, and left the room. As soon as she was gone, Mace sighed. "Two of UNIT's finest. Tell me, Harkness, do you think they were worth it?"

Jack didn't answer; but Gwen came to his rescue. "Maybe they were," she said. "We can't know until we find out more about this thing he saw."

"Yes." David Findlay, who had stood quietly at his station throughout the confrontation, spoke up for the first time. "Tell us more about that."

Jack frowned, thinking back. "It was big. About ten, twelve feet in diameter, I'd guess. And it looked like a giant soccer ball."

"Truncated icosahedron," Findlay responded.

"What?" Gwen asked blankly.

"Truncated icosahedron," Findlay repeated. "It's the football shape…" He shifted awkwardly. "Never mind."

"So a sort-of sphere," Price said. "Like the one that Torchwood One had?"

She looked at Jack expectantly, but it was Ianto who answered, "That depends. Could you stand to look at it?"

This was aimed at Jack, who slowly answered, "Uh, sure?"

"I mean, did it seem off, like it shouldn't exist?"

"No, not really."

"Then it probably isn't the same thing," Ianto answered. "The sphere One found gave that aura, from what my colleagues told me. I never saw it myself, but I heard that most people couldn't stand to look at it."

"Even so," Mace said, considering this, "we can't discount the possibility that this is similar, in any way. If it is, then we've got a serious problem on our hands. The Doctor's report says that Daleks emerged from that sphere." To Jack, he added, "And obviously whatever came in this giant football of yours is also hostile."

He frowned, and looked at the display screens through which Martha and Gwen had watched the search. "I don't suppose those helmet cameras recorded footage?" he asked Price.

It was Findlay who answered. "Yeah, they should have. Automatically record any time they're turned on, so even without the radio signal, they should have footage."

"I left the helmets with Captain Magambo," Price told him. "The cameras are detachable. I'll have her send them here."

"Good," Mace said. "Maybe we'll be able to get more from that."

"What about after the attack?" asked Gwen. "The aliens were obviously gone by the time you found Jack and the others. So where'd they run off to?"

"Back to the breach, maybe," Findlay suggested.

"Or they've left the tower," Price said, worried. "They were camouflaged. They could be anywhere now."

"What do you think?" Gwen asked Jack.

Jack took a moment to answer. It wasn't normal for him to _not_ have an answer or even an informed guess, and he didn't deny that it bothered him. But to pretend wouldn't help.

"I'm out of my depth this time," he admitted. Gwen and Ianto both raised their eyebrows. "I could tell you all you need to know about the Time Vortex and how it works, but existence between realities…" He shrugged, and looked at Mace. "I only know what the Doctor told me. He's the expert. I think we'd do well to get his help with this one."

Jack knew that UNIT generally preferred to bring in the Doctor in such times as this, when they were facing a problem they knew too little to solve. But he did not like the hesitant demeanour of everyone else in the room, nor the look that Mace and Price gave each other.

"What?" he asked, looking around.

"Yes, about that," Mace said slowly. "There's something you should know about."

* * *

Jack paced distractedly. There was little to expect and plenty _not_ to expect; he knew that. He certainly had not expected this.

"So this person specifically told you not to involve the Doctor?" he asked Mace.

"Yes," came the firm answer. "He mentioned him by name."

"And there will be serious consequences for us and for Earth if we do?"

"As an organization devoted to Earth's defence, that's not a threat we can take lightly," Mace reminded him.

"So we're not going to tell him what's going on here?" asked Jack, frowning.

"I didn't say that," Mace replied, holding a hand up. "But we need to make sure we've exhausted all options before involving him."

"I told you, I'm out of my depth," Jack retorted. "We know too little. We _have_ exhausted all our options." He folded his arms, facing Mace sternly. "Hasn't it occurred to you that John Doe might be bluffing? Could be he's scared of the Doctor's involvement."

"The thought did cross our minds," Mace answered coolly.

"I understand your concerns," Jack said. "I really do. But this concerns the Doctor in every way. The exact same breach he sealed two years ago is open again, a breach caused by an alien race that destroyed his home world, the same breach that his best friend died closing."

As he spoke, it suddenly occurred to Jack that it was a little odd that they chose to summon Torchwood's help this time rather than the Doctor's, even before receiving this anonymous warning. The fact that Mace adopted an even sterner demeanour as Jack spoke told him instantly that Mace had already been fully aware of everything he had just said, and he was about to learn why they'd summoned Torchwood instead.

"That," Mace said firmly, "is a legitimate reason to keep him away. This is a situation that might make him emotionally unstable." Before Jack could interrupt, he added, "You yourself lost your judgment because of it. Who's to say that the Doctor won't also?"

Jack could not deny this. He'd known the second he first reunited with the Doctor at Malcassairo, that even months later, the Time Lord was still devastated. He also had not forgotten how desperately Ianto had tried to save Lisa Hallett, risking the lives of his teammates in the process. Love and grief were natural emotions; but they also could lend elements of unpredictability to a mission. That was why agencies of this kind worked so hard to keep people so "compromised" from said mission. But this time they had no choice, and Jack knew that Mace knew it too.

"I won't let that happen again," Jack promised him. "And I'll do my best to help the Doctor handle it too. You have reservations, and rightly so. But I don't know what that thing up there was, and I only caught a glimpse of my assailants. We have no information except that the breach was open. That's not much to go on."

Mace softened a little, but he remained silent.

"What does Martha think of all this?" Jack asked, trying a different tact.

"I haven't asked her," Mace said. "But perhaps her opinion would be valuable."

* * *

When they die, they're just a lump of tissue. As simple and clinical as that. It wasn't pleasant, it wasn't pretty, but all physicians learned eventually to detach themselves from the person getting dissected. The person's dead. That's all there is to it, really.

It was the reason that, five minutes before the autopsy, Dr. Rosas had been eating Ramen noodles at his desk with Private Hunt's corpse on a lab table only feet away, and Larkin's corpse on the table next to it, like it was the most normal thing in the world to enjoy one's supper in the presence of the dead. And Martha herself had nothing to say about it.

Dr. Rosas wasn't eating now, of course. It's not very hygienic to have one's supper when working. Again, that's all there was to it. Clinical. Detached. Dr. Rosas and Dr. Jones were, in that moment, the picture of clinical detachment: both in white lab coats, wearing safety googles and rubber gloves; both of them had a scalpel in in hand. A bone saw lay nearby. Incision down the sternum. Another at the solar plexus. The heart and lungs looked fine. So far, anyway. Dr. Rosas's lab coat had some of Larkin's blood on it. Martha's probably did too. Neither of them were bothered by the fact that their hands were covered in visceral blood.

The door swung open, and Jack and Colonel Mace entered. Both were equally detached to the opened corpse on the lab table.

"Hey there, Bones," Jack cheerfully said to Martha. "Any chance you could shed some new light on this?"

Martha stepped back and pointed at the open thoracic cavity at her scalpel. "Well, the cause of death was definitely asphyxiation in both cases."

"What caused the asphyxiation is where it gets weird," Dr. Rosas added.

"Burning pain in the middle followed by suffocation," Jack recited his own experience.

"Exactly." Martha picked up a set of forceps and used them to pull out a flap of tissue. It was torn and burned. "Her diaphragm's fried," she explained. "Burned right down the middle and all the tendons and ligaments detached, which caused the entire thing to contract. Completely useless. We haven't opened up Hunt yet, but I bet we'll find the same thing."

Jack raised an eyebrow. "Some kind of focused weapon?"

"Subtle," Mace commented. "Until you find it, that is. Subtle but distinct."

Martha nodded. "Definitely an alien weapon, but apparently one designed for human anatomy."

"Not necessarily," Jack interrupted. "You've travelled with the Doctor, Martha. You've been all over the galaxy, so you've seen how many species look similar to humans. Many of them have similar anatomy too, including the respiratory structure. As I'm sure UNIT's own M.E.s will have started to observe by now."

Martha nodded thoughtfully.

"Why is that, do you think?" interrupted Dr. Rosas. "Why do so many aliens look human? Does evolution just favour a certain shape?"

He had a look of academic interest on the topic, one she had seen many times from the teaching and graduate assistants when she was an undergraduate.

"It's a great mystery, actually," Jack answered. "That's one popular theory. There's also the Antecedent theory, which basically says"—

Colonel Mace cleared his throat.

"Sorry," Jack said sheepishly. "Discussion for another time." He looked back at the corpse. "I suppose it's possible that we're dealing with a species that did design their weapons specifically for human victims. I've seen this kind of tactic before. It's fairly typical of interstellar conquest. It's a great way to avoid friendly fire if your weapons won't harm your own forces. It also means that the conquered peoples can't turn their masters' weapons against them."

This thought sent a nervous frisson through the others, and Mace grimaced while Rosas looked worried.

"On the other hand," Jack continued lightly, "as you said, this makes this distinct. Not immediately visible but unmistakable once you do see it. Which means that if they kill anyone else with these weapons it won't be easy to hide, now that we know what to look for. Aliens using that tactic generally don't use stealth with such a distinctive attack."

"But these aliens did," Mace reminded him.

"Yeah. We might have taken them by surprise," Jack said contemplatively. "But I have no idea what they were. I wish this told me more, but it doesn't. We still need help."

Martha smirked. That didn't take very long. "Gwen just warned me that you think we need an expert," she said, pointing at her phone nearby.

"Did she?" asked Jack, amused. "I think she's very curious about meeting him herself."

Martha looked at Mace. "Did you tell him?"

"Yes. It's why we're here."

Martha nodded and looked at Dr. Rosas. "Could you leave us for a few minutes?"

Rosas nodded and moved away. Once he was out of earshot, Martha asked Mace, "So you're considering asking me to bring him here?"

Mace nodded. "As Harkness has pointed out, we have little choice. But do you think it's worth the risk?"

Martha frowned, thinking it over. She too was wary of bringing in the Doctor when a hostile alien force had warned against bringing him. By name. It was uncommon, but not unheard of, for UNIT to encounter an alien species that had previously had run-ins with the Doctor; the Sontarans the most recent example. But even the Sontarans hadn't realized UNIT was connected with the Doctor, let alone that he was there at all, until their stratagem was well underway.

But this alien force was already well aware of the connection, before UNIT had even thought to bring in the Doctor. Even Martha had to admit that that could potentially be extremely dangerous, both to the Doctor and to Earth. But on the other hand…

"It is risky, yes," she said slowly, "but the Doctor is the only person we can consult who really knows anything about this. None of us can make headway right now. We have too little information."

"I see," Mace said quietly. Then he nodded. "Well, if this person was determined enough to warn us to keep the Doctor away, then they most certainly will be watching for his arrival. If we bring the Doctor in, this person would almost certainly become more desperate and more dangerous."

"What if we sneaked him in and allowed whatever we're dealing with to move forward thinking he isn't here?" suggested Jack. "Think about it. Whatever they're planning, they'll probably be less cautious if they think he's safely out of the way. Maybe we can catch them off guard."

Martha raised an eyebrow. "A stealth operation? You have to admit, it's not his usual forte."

"Indeed," Mace said, sounding a little uncertain. "Subtlety isn't one of his strong points."

"True, but it's not exactly one of UNIT's strong points either," Jack countered.

Mace couldn't argue with this. "Fine. I think I know a good place for him to land his ship, where he's unlikely to be seen." He looked at Martha pointedly. "In the meantime, we're going to have to prepare him for this operation. This will be a very personal matter for him."

Martha looked uncomfortable. "I'm… not totally sure I'm the best person to help him deal with this, sir." She could see the Doctor storming back into the Tardis and taking off before she could fully explain why they brought him there. The look on Jack's face told her that he was thinking the same thing.

"Then _I'll_ contact him," he said determinedly. Mace stared at him. Seeing the commander's expression, Jack explained, "I suffered the same loss. Since he and I have that in common, he might listen to me."

Martha smiled, relieved that they'd decided to have Jack on this mission. Mace, looking satisfied, told Jack, "Very well. Dr. Jones?"

Martha took off her rubber gloves and then took her phone from the counter at the other end of the room. She flipped it open, and filed through her contacts screen until she found the right number, before handing the phone to Jack. "That's the number to the phone I gave him. Good luck."

* * *

Her eyes were what unnerved him the most. Even when he couldn't see her, when she stood behind him and he sat frozen, paralyzed, incapacitated, and helpless, he could see her eyes, and they bore into him, tearing into his very soul.

"It's been waiting for so long in the dark and the cold… until you came, bodies so hot with blood."

Agony and fear filled his mind and soul, keeping him bound; desperate as he was to move, somehow his body simply wouldn't obey. The edges of his vision blackened. He could no longer hear the panicked passengers.

 _What do you need?_ he mentally cried out, the only thing he could do. _What do you want? I'm trying to understand. What do you want with me?_

A deep thunderous voice responded: _"You do not and cannot understand, Perennial. If it was simply trivial form I wanted, why would I wait for mortals like you to wander out here, when I could easily take one from the leisure palace? But you! You don't understand the power you hold, do you? You don't even know you have it."_

He could not will himself to reply; every element of his consciousness seemed to seize up in terror, to a level he could not comprehend. The darkness had filled his mind, his heart, his soul, leaving him aware only of his tormenter and his fear.

" _I have been waiting for so long for this opportunity,"_ it continued menacingly. _"And the more afraid you become, the more vulnerable to my power you will be. You will succumb to me, just as this inconsequential human succumbed. She is nothing, so small. So insignificant. So afraid."_

As he thought of her, he ground out, _Let her go._

The voice rumbled with contemptuous laughter. _"Do you think that just because you and your little human friends managed to destroy two of my kin, that I fear you?"_

If he could swallow, if he could cower, he would; but he was so powerless that he could not even give expression to his dread, except to silently whisper, _Who are you?_

The voice did not deign to answer his question. _This_ _is the mortal the Daleks fear? Confident, complacent, even arrogant when in your element, but remove all control from you, all order, all power, even the power of words, and you are as helpless and terrified as the children on your world in the moment you burned it. Look at you, completely in my power. So many years confidently adventuring across the universe, interfering in the events you land yourself in and saving worlds like some silly vagabond vigilante, yet how many times have you overstepped yourself? How many have died because of your life-style?"_

And contrary to his will, he saw their faces; the young Alzarian native whose death brought the extinction of the dinosaurs and ultimately the rise of the human race; the scientist who defected and tried to stop a terrible creation, only to be murdered by his colleague's twisted, evil creations; his companion and unofficial pupil who became President of Gallifrey, only to die in a political intrigue; his granddaughter; his daughter; the arboreal sentient; the servant girl who saved the world; and the volunteer fighters on Satellite Five. (1)

 _From what I've seen,_ a voice from long ago sneered, _your little happy-go-lucky life leaves devastation in its wake._

Then he saw her… the girl who swallowed time itself, laughing with him at a chippie, because he had brought her there with no money… again; standing aside with tacit amusement as her mother pulled him into an unwanted kiss; as they indulged in a hug; a laugh; prank wars, mischief, adventures, near misses, always laughing about it afterwards. And he cried out in despair and fury and grief.

" _And her loss was the worst, wasn't it?"_ the terrible voice taunted him.

And then he heard the condemning word, the word that changed everything and destroyed everything: "Offline."

The Doctor looked over to the source of the sound, to see that Rose's lever slowly moved downwards; even as it did, he could see the Daleks' descent into the Void beginning to slow. Then he saw Rose reaching for her lever, trying to grab it and pull it back online while maintaining her grasp on her Magnaclamp. The Doctor could see that the lever had moved beyond her reach. Rose realized this too, and before he could react, before he could protest, she let go of her lifeline and leapt forward, grabbing hold of the lever. But the Void's pull was relentless, and she struggled to force the lever back into position.

The Doctor opened his mouth to shout, he knew not what, but seeing his dismay, she cried, "I've got to get it upright!"

Presently, Rose's strength seemed to be greater than the breach; she resisted its pull long enough to shove the lever back into place. As the computer voice said, "Online, and locked," the remaining Daleks flew over the Doctor's shoulder and into oblivion. But he could only watch the nightmarish scene taking place across the room from him, only a few paces away, and he was powerless to stop it."

" _My people called it the Void,"_ his own voice whispered through some echo of time, _"and it contains absolutely, completely, positively nothing. It's not even empty space, because empty space is something. Even if something survived the lack of oxygen, they'd go insane in there until they became part of the emptiness. In the end, nothing can survive there, not Daleks, not Cybermen… certainly not"—_

"Rose! Hold on!" he screamed in vain, reaching toward her. But too far away… too out of reach.

" _She had the power of a god once, yet she couldn't save herself in the end?"_

The voice of his tormentor laughed again. _"Did she punish herself? She who vainly loved you so much that she gave up her own family and life for a man she could never have? Perhaps she didn't save herself because she secretly didn't want to live with her decision."_

 _No,_ he whispered. _No, that's not true. It can't be true._

But his denial only made the voice laugh harder. The vision flashed before his eyes, and he watched again as Rose struggled helplessly, clutching the lever as her final, failing lifeline, but the pull proved to be too strong for her. Even from his viewpoint, however, the Doctor could see that her fingers were growing tired, and the vacuum pulled harder than ever. She then turned her face in his direction, and the Doctor's hearts seemed to stop as he took in her sorrowful expression, fully aware of what was about to happen. All time seemed to slow in that one second, in which Rose Tyler's eyes met his. Then she let go.

" _Fascinating," the Carrionite mused. "There is no name. Why would a man hide his title in such despair?" Then she grinned, a sudden, cruel glee manifest in her eyes and poise, and she pointed at the Doctor. "Oh, but look! There's still one word with a power that aches!"_

He screamed. He screamed her name and reached out to her, hoping against hope that this was just a nightmare, that he would wake up to find her in the library or in her bedroom, perfectly fine. But no such luck, never such luck, not for him. It only took a few seconds, but to him it felt like a whole lifetime as Rose was enveloped in white light, and he could not see her face as she was lost, though for a second he could still see her hand, reaching out for him.

" _This is your greatest conquest,"_ the shade of Midnight taunted, _"the girl who died because she fell in love with you."_

"No," he whispered.

" _I have waited for so long. And in you I find power, glorious power, a name hidden, tremendous fear, and the most delicious despair."_

Rose was gone. There was a howl, followed by a sigh, the soft rustle of wind blowing back, leaving complete silence as the breach closed. All that remained was a blank, white wall.

" _The naming won't work on me," the Doctor informed her, his voice intense and wary._

 _But the witch merely cackled. "But your heart grows cold:_

" _The Howling jaws of Hell await  
_ _The fading Valiant Child's fate.  
_ _Falling, falling, down she goes,  
_ _Falling, the refulgent Rose!"_

* * *

The Doctor cried out and sat up, looking around in the darkness wildly. Then he saw the analog clock on the wall opposite, and realized that he had been dreaming, his worst memories playing out in his subconscious. The Doctor placed his head in his hands, as a fresh wave of grief swept over him. He felt the pain of her loss every day, but he hadn't felt it so acutely in a long time, not until that thing on Midnight had dragged the pain back.

And for the first time in months, he allowed himself to quietly sob out his renewed anguish.

When he brought her with him to see the stars, all he wanted was a hand to hold. Did the universe really have to punish him for that? Did the universe really have to sentence _her_ to death, literally to hell itself? And why did he even bother anymore? The questions flew through his mind, as it had many times before, and every time he could only wallow in despair as he longed for answers that would never come.

Finally spent, the Doctor reached for his bedside table and opened a drawer. Rummaging around inside until he found what he was looking for, he pulled a handkerchief from within. He wiped the tears from his face and the sweat from his brow, and then sat up, suddenly feeling older and more tired than ever. Rose had always made him feel young again; but that blessing as lost.

He stood quietly and moved into the bathroom, where a stream of running water over a basin ran from somewhere within the Tardis, and he splashed the cold liquid over his face, still feeling weak and tired. He then dried his face and moved out from his quarters, making his way through the maze of corridors until he reached the console room, which was only dimly lit. The incident on Midnight, which still chilled him, had left him very drained and withdrawn, enough for him to retire to a bedroom he seldom used. But as he became more alert, he realized that he had slept for much longer than was normal for him: a good seven hours.

"Blimey," he muttered. "Last time I slept that much…"

No sooner had he spoken, however, when a sudden, alarming thought struck him. Perhaps the creature from Midnight had done more damage than he realized, and the thought of Donna's finding a complete stranger in the console room (as he had not told her about this yet) made him turn back toward the corridor in search of a mirror.

"You have not regenerated, if that's what's alarmed you," a soft voice forestalled him.

The Doctor nearly jumped out of his skin. Whirling around, he saw a man standing by the console, a (much) older man with a faint, white glow. The Doctor recognized him instantly, but had not seen him for centuries. His jaw dropped.

"You have taken an incalculable risk, by mortal standards, to come to this point, Time Lord," the White Guardian told him calmly. "For you, though, it has been a very long time since last we met. I, however, am not bound to time as you mortals are."

The Doctor shifted on his feet, unsure of how to react to the unexpected visitor. The Guardian was dressed, as usual, entirely in white. He wore a wide-brimmed hat and had a white goatee, looking exactly as he did when the Doctor first encountered him. That encounter had launched him into a long, dangerous mission with a new companion, now long dead. The Doctor didn't regret that mission, but the memory of this event, and the few encounters following it, caused him to feel a strong foreboding at the White Guardian's presence.

"What the hell do you want?" he bit out.

The Doctor knew, even as he asked, that most likely the Guardian would not deign to answer his question, no matter how rudely or politely it was applied. He knew the answer anyway. There were only two reasons Guardians ever came and went, and often those reasons went hand-in-hand. He either was bringing a message, or a task, or both.

"It is not what I want that matters to you," the Guardian said coolly. "What matters is the answer you do not even realize that you seek. The Universe is moving into a new era. Fail to understand my message and you will be left behind in the unfettered currents of Time."

The Doctor frowned, unsure where this was going.

"Until now," the Guardian continued, "time in this firmament was tethered behind the floodgates and dams that the Time Lords built."

"Gallifrey has been destroyed," the Doctor snapped. "There's no going back from that."

"Indeed," the White Guardian acknowledged. "Now Time is running its natural course, as unpredictable, as deadly, and as unstoppable as the waters of a natural river. The order your people tried to establish has been suspended, and the primordial laws are restored. If you do not find your way, you will be lost in its tides."

A stab of anger flashed through the Doctor.

"And where were you during the Time War, Mr. I-will-stop-eternal-chaos?" he snarled. "I fought and I watched as the Time Lords died, as time burned and exploded, unchecked. I saw thousands of civilizations fade from existence, and trillions of lives lost, while the Eternals and the Guardians stood by and did nothing!"

The Guardian looked thoroughly unperturbed by his fury. "Much as it would have looked that way to a Time Lord," he told the Doctor unflinchingly, "the Time War was not, nor would have led to, _eternal_ chaos. There is much more to the gift of reality and existence than the flow and regulation of Time, than the self-styled Time Lords ever understood or imagined."

The Doctor shook his head indignantly. "The Time Lords were not perfect, but they could survey Time in its entire complexity, and now you come here telling me that they knew _nothing_?"

"But the Time Lords _couldn't_ survey Time in its complexity," the Guardian countered, his voice now becoming very firm. "Much as they imagined otherwise, they could never _know_ Time. That is the prerogative of the _sixth_ dimension, and the Time Lords were never more than third-dimensional beings who had developed an ability to sense and view the fourth dimension to an extent." Seeing the Doctor gaping at him, he added, "If the Time Lords truly had the powers they claimed, then why did they not foresee the Time War themselves?" The Doctor, brought up short, could only shake indignantly. "But the Guardians are of the _eighth_ dimension, Doctor, and we foresaw it long ago. We knew that you would be the one to end it, yet survive. This is why we chose you to search for the Key to Time. The day you destroyed it was the day you proved your worth."

This did nothing to assuage the Doctor's growing anger. "You _knew_?" he shouted. "And you gave no warning, you did nothing to stop it?"

The Guardian's aura suddenly brightened intensely, and he stepped closer, the combined actions causing him to suddenly look much more imposing, and the Doctor raised his hand to shield his eyes from the growing burning light.

"What makes you think our purpose is to prevent painful, undesirable things from happening to mortals?" The Guardian's voice was like a thunderclap. "Why should we deign to see to the complete comfort of those whose freedom to choose is theirs by right? We are not your servants, Doctor."

Confused, the Doctor stammered, "I never said…"

"You presumed," the Guardian cut him off. "Like all faithless mortals, you presumed. You're a clever man, Doctor, but you are not always a very wise one. You carry within your soul the same arrogance, the same self-assertion that all Time Lords carried. You fail to recognize that the Time Lords and their Floodgates were ephemeral. Eternity is not. Eternity is above and beyond Time. We were able to overlook the Time Lords' complacency and their brazen self-declaration as rulers of Time, but then they overstepped themselves when they sent you back in time to stop the Daleks' creation. The Time Lords brought their fate upon themselves. Do _not_ blame the Guardians for their destruction."

The Guardian did not shout, but his words pierced the Doctor's conscience so completely that he might as well have. He shut his eyes at the memory, feeling an old guilt resurface at his failure in the endeavour. Much as it went against his own principles and the fundamental rules of time, the Doctor knew full well that had he succeeded in stopping Davros all those years ago, the Time War would never have happened.

"You think of your failure on Skaro," the Guardian observed, "but you never would have succeeded. That day the Firmament, the Space-Time Continuum, got her own back. The Time Lords only saw the consequences of their actions when the Daleks converged upon Gallifrey."

He paused, and the Doctor looked downward, remembering even as he was aware of the Guardian's scrutiny.

"You were unique among the Time Lords," he continued after a moment, "but in all your travels, after all you've seen, can you continue to believe that the Time Lords really were everything they claimed to be? Were they actually lords of time? Were they really the oldest and wisest race in the universe?"

The Doctor was silent as the reality of every lie and every mistaken belief he'd been brought up with was flung in his face. But even if he didn't like to remember the reality of the Time Lords, he could not deny what they were, what they had become.

As the Guardian allowed his aura to lessen, appearing less formidable and more compassionate, he gently concluded, "The only difference, Doctor, between humans and Time Lords, is that humans know they are ephemeral."

"Have you come here just to rub the war in my face?" the Doctor asked, angry tears stinging his eyes. "I, who destroyed Gallifrey and the Daleks myself? I'm reminded of it enough without your coming here, thank you!"

"Yes," the White Guardian said firmly. " _You_. And there we come to the material point. The destruction of Gallifrey was an egregious, necessary, and courageous decision, but you remain ignorant, unaware that you do not even remember the most courageous decision you have ever made."

"What decision?" asked the Doctor, confused. "What do you mean?"

"You are blinded by your own grief. You think only of your lost home which was never your home, and your lost friend that the Howling consumed."

The Doctor looked at his feet, his earlier anguish resurfacing.

"Because of this narrow focus, you do not see the journey you have walked your entire life." The Guardian's eyes closed, a strange energy suddenly seemed to pulse through the console room, causing the Tardis to hum almost in distress. The energy converged and diverged from the Guardian in strange waves, not harming the Doctor but causing a strange sensation, both cold and hot, to flow through his body, but he recognized it instantly; it was the same aura that radiated from the Untempered Schism.

When it passed, the Guardian's eyes opened, and he said, "You remain unique, selected from the moment you first looked into the Untempered Schism, from the moment you were first given your true name."

The Doctor looked back up sharply, startled.

"In time, you will learn the meaning of that name and its purpose," the Guardian went on. "Only when you understand this will you understand the choices that lie before you." He paused, allowing the Doctor to take this in, and continued, "This brings me to my purpose in coming here. You are a select man, but there are two others who you must find, whom you must unite with, two who also have hidden names and purposes."

"Like me," the Doctor whispered.

"Yes. The first is on Earth, a man in exile. He is unique, immovable in the floods of time, ephemeral but not mortal, sempiternal but not eternal, an anomaly of ephemeral reality. That," the Guardian said, "is the one we call Immutable."

"And the other?" the Doctor asked faintly.

"A powerful being whose father is the Firmament and whose mother is the Howling, soon to break out of the darkness and seek her god-like purpose in this mortal realm." The Guardian looked at the Doctor with a serious mien that made him nervous. "This is the one we call Refulgent," he said, "the first and last of her kind. She appears benign, but she is a cosmic force, Doctor, controlled by none. Temperance must be her reigning virtue, or the entire structure of the Space-Time Continuum could unravel at her command. Take care, Doctor, for it will be your role to ensure that this does not occur."

The Doctor shivered, unable to understand; for what kind of a being could be so tremendously powerful as to warrant this kind of caution from a being of Eternity itself?

"A cataclysm is before you," the Guardian warned, "inevitable, unpreventable, outside your control, but not impossible to end, so long as you successfully unite with Immutable and Refulgent. Until then, beware Dagon, beware Leviathan, and beware Jormungandr." When the Doctor only blinked uncomprehendingly, he continued, "You can no longer be a wandering vagabond, Doctor. On the day that you seek me of your own free will, on the day the Convulsion begins, you will understand. But for now, heed my words."

The Doctor opened his mouth to inquire further, but then he noticed that the Guardian's form seemed to be fading.

"But do not forget," he said firmly. "The Age of the Time Lords is over. The Age of the Perennials is about to begin."

And with those enigmatic words, the White Guardian was gone, leaving a very confused Time Lord. The Doctor stared at the spot where he was standing, his mind spinning, unsure of what to think. But before he could come to any conclusion if there was one to make, a loud trill interrupted his racing thoughts.

Martha Jones's phone was ringing.

* * *

 _(1) The character references here are: Adric, Ronson, Romana, Susan Foreman, Jenny, Jabe, Gwyneth, and Lynda with a "Y."_

 _A/N: Well, that's a fun, enigmatic note to end_ _on_. _As everything else about this version, the entire conversation with the White Guardian is very different from what it was in the original. I refuse to detail how, except to say that the Guardian is a lot more severe this time. The changes were somewhat inspired by the conversation between Odysseus and Tiresias in the Underworld, in_ _Andrei Konchalovsky's 1997 miniseries The Odyssey._


	7. Back, At the Site of Renewed Grief

_A/N: Sorry about the wait; I've been on vacation. It was nice to get to visit my family, first time I've been home in months. But it also meant I didn't get up to much writing._

* * *

Chapter Six  
Back, At the Site of Renewed Grief

When Donna Noble got up and dressed, the first thing she became aware of as she approached the console room was the sound of a phone ringing. When no one seemed to answer it, she hurried in, assuming that she had gotten up before the Doctor… which would be a first. If he hadn't gone to bed after such a difficult, traumatic day, he'd never hear the end of it.

But rather than find an empty room with a ringing phone lying on the console, she found that the Doctor was up, dressed except for his suit coat and tie, and looking tired and worn; and to her bemusement, he was holding the mobile phone, not answering it, just staring at it.

"Well, aren't you going to answer it?" she demanded.

The Doctor jerked and whipped his sonic screwdriver from his pocket, pointing it at her wildly. Startled, Donna held up her hands defensively. For a moment they just stared at each other, waiting for the other to move first. Then the phone stopped ringing and the Doctor, seemingly recollecting himself, stowed away the sonic screwdriver.

"Sorry," he mumbled sheepishly.

"Blimey," Donna breathed. "It's only me. Ease up a bit."

"Ease up?" the Doctor said with false cheer. "I'm perfectly at ease."

"You just jumped thirty feet!" Donna scolded. "I've never seen you so on edge."

"I'm usually not," the Doctor protested. A dark look crossed his face, and he eased himself onto the captain's chair and placed his feet against the rim of the console.

"Bad night?" asked Donna sympathetically. "I had trouble sleeping just from _hearing_ about your road trip yesterday."

"Yeah." To his credit, the Doctor didn't shudder at the memory, his usual restraint returning after its lapse only seconds ago. Most would hide in a corner for a few days. "Visit Midnight, go on a bus tour, encounter a body-snatching monster, get possessed, get tormented by one's own subconscious, and have a _very_ unusual morning. Not a good combination."

Donna frowned at his words, but she recognized his flippant babble, downplaying both what had occurred on Midnight and whatever an "unusual morning" meant; he was walling himself up, forbidding her to ask any further. Donna warred between respecting his privacy and her usual impulse to try to help with whatever it was. But before she could make up her mind, the phone began ringing again.

The Doctor and Donna both looked at it. Then Donna looked back at the Doctor, but he made no motion to answer it. He was staring at it with an expression that bordered on dread.

Finally, Donna said, "Well, are you going to answer that, or shall I?"

The Doctor said nothing.

"If that's Martha, she's sounding pretty insistent," Donna pointed out, and then looking between him and the phone pointedly, she added, "I hope it's not _too_ urgent."

The Doctor deflated, and reached for the phone. "Put it on speaker," Donna said. "Martha doesn't usually call to make small talk. If something's happening I want to hear about it directly."

The Doctor nodded, flipped the phone open, and pressed the right key. "Hello?"

"Hello, Doc."

It was a male voice Donna didn't recognize. She looked at the Doctor curiously, and he looked rather taken aback himself.

"Jack?" he asked.

"Who?" Donna mouthed.

The Doctor ignored her. "Why are _you_ on Martha's phone?" he demanded.

"Asking you out on a date?" the man on the other end deadpanned.

Donna raised her eyebrows at the Doctor, who repeatedly looked between her and the phone, looking extremely self-conscious. "In your dreams, Jack," he snapped.

"Can't say I didn't try," 'Jack' said dryly.

Donna couldn't help the smirk that crossed her face: a discomfited Doctor being openly flirted with by another man; that was a side of him she hadn't ever seen before. Unusual morning, indeed. Although she couldn't help but feel charmed by Jack's pleasant baritone and his American accent.

Unfortunately, she was only given a very short window for her amusement before Jack spoke again, and this time he sounded very grim. "Look, Doc, something's happened. It's very serious, and it's a bit beyond my abilities."

The Doctor's eyebrows went up. "You don't often ask _me_ for help," he said. "And since you're on Martha's phone I assume you're with her? Torchwood doesn't usually work with UNIT."

"Yeah. Should tell you something, shouldn't it?"

Donna could tell by the Doctor's expression that it _did_ tell him something. "What's going on, Jack?" he asked soberly.

"It's simpler if you just come."

The Doctor's mien turned even more grave, and he moved to the console's controls. "All right," he said. "I'll follow your signal."

Donna watched as he began working at the Tardis controls. The console revved loudly, and its tell-tale grinding sound began. The Doctor was carefully watching the monitor as he worked.

"Got a lock on it now," he said. "Should get me there shortly."

"You sure about that?" Jack asked coolly. "You've had companions who disappeared for twelve months because of your driving, as I recall."

The Doctor growled irritably. "That happened _once_. And you weren't even there. I've got a _lock_ on it, Jack. Can't fail."

"You'd better be right about that," Jack answered.

"I am," the Doctor snapped. "See you shortly."

"Theoretically. Oh, and Doctor?"

"Yeah?"

"Just so you know," Jack said, "you can't draw too much attention to yourself this time."

The Doctor raised his eyebrows, and Donna looked at him in surprise.

"I mean that completely seriously." The tone in Jack's voice left no room for them to think otherwise. "I'll explain once you get here."

The line went dead. The Doctor sighed, and pocketed the phone. As he continued working the controls, Donna asked, "So… who was that?"

"An old friend of mine," the Doctor answered. "He used to travel with me and… well, with me."

An old sadness that she instantly recognized crossed his face, and she knew better than to inquire further.

"So why does he need your help?" she asked.

"No idea, but it doesn't sound good. It's not really like Jack to be so tight-lipped about it, and as I said, Torchwood doesn't usually work with UNIT." He shook his head.

 _Torchwood_. Donna was sure she'd heard the Doctor mention it before, but she couldn't quite place where. But she guessed she'd find out shortly.

"And we're supposed to be surreptitious about this, whatever it is?" she asked.

"So he said."

" _You_?" Donna asked with an incredulous laugh. "Now this, I have to see."

"Oi! I can be surreptitious!" the Doctor retorted.

Donna raised her eyebrows at him pointedly. He looked sheepish.

"Never mind," he said, shaking his head. "Let's just see what this is about. Hang on tight."

He slammed a lever down. The console room began shaking violently, and Donna seized the rim of the console, steading herself, and waited as she usually did.

When the shaking stopped, the Doctor pulled on his trench coat and dashed to the door, Donna close behind. The Doctor swung open the Tardis door with a creak, and together they stepped outside.

At first, Donna thought it was night; it was almost pitch black, except a small area of light from a lamp held by one of two men standing nearby, a soldier in a heavy coat, under which Donna could see the black uniform and red beret of UNIT. The other was a tall man in a long grey 1940s-style coat, whose face was still mostly in shadow. Then Donna realized that it wasn't night at all; or rather, it could have been day. They weren't outside. They were in a tunnel. As Donna cautiously stepped out of the Tardis, she almost stumbled as her foot slipped off a heavy wooden timber and onto some rocks. Looking down, she realized she was standing on train tracks.

The man in the grey coat stepped forward. The light from the console room revealed his face, and Donna's eyebrows went up. _He's_ _gorgeous_ , she thought.

The Doctor and Jack Harkness merely looked at each other for a moment, as though sizing each other up. Then both smiled and thumped each other on the back.

"Good to see you, Jack," the Doctor said.

"And you." Jack looked at Donna curiously. "And who's this?"

"Donna," the Doctor introduced. Donna noted a sudden wariness that entered his voice, and when Jack grinned and opened his mouth, the Doctor cut him off with, "Don't start."

"Relax, Doc," Jack said dryly, and he held out a hand for Donna to shake. "Good to see someone's keeping him in line."

Donna felt slightly disappointed; for a moment she'd been gearing up for banter with a man she could tell was a practiced flirt. But instead Jack's manner of greeting had been only friendly, and even the Doctor looked surprised. Jack then pointed at the soldier.

"And this is… Sergeant Davis, wasn't it?"

The soldier nodded, and saluted the Doctor, who grimaced.

"Don't salute," he growled.

"You let _me_ salute you," Jack retorted. He then held something up for the Doctor to take, and Donna realized for the first time that he was holding a hooded black coat. The Doctor accepted the coat, looking confused.

"What's this for?" he asked.

"Lose the trench-coat and put that on," Jack told him, in a voice that brooked no argument. "And keep the hood up."

The Doctor looked at the coat with some distaste, back at Jack, and then upward. Donna watched him survey their surroundings, from the railroad tracks they stood on, to the tunnel ceiling, and then the third rail running alongside the tracks. As he did, Donna heard a distant rumble, which grew louder and louder from somewhere nearby, then seemingly passed over them and died away.

The Doctor looked at Jack with raised eyebrows. "This is a Tube tunnel."

Jack nodded. "Don't worry, this tunnel's not in operation. It hasn't been for a couple of years. We needed to get you somewhere where the Tardis could be almost on site but _out_ of sight, if you take my meaning."

The Doctor frowned at this. Then he complied and took off his coat, which he threw back through the Tardis doors. He then started putting on the new coat.

"It's a bit big for me," he complained.

"All the better, then," Jack shrugged. "Let's go. Keep the hood up."

The Doctor closed the Tardis doors, and then drew up his hood. Jack and Davis led the way forward, Donna trying to keep close behind; avoiding tripping over the tracks was made tricky by the lack of light. As they walked down the tunnel, Jack began, "As I said, the tunnel's not in use. The Tardis will be perfectly safe there, and UNIT might find a way to smuggle it closer to the site of the explosion if you need it."

"Explosion?" the Doctor queried.

Jack went on as though there had been no interruption. "We're going to a closed station that only UNIT has access to."

"Which is where?" asked Donna.

Jack then stopped, and turned back around. Davis held the light higher so they could better see each other, but Donna noticed that he seemed to also be holding back a bit, looking uncomfortable. Jack himself seemed to be eyeing the Doctor somewhat uneasily.

"You're not gonna like it," he said quietly.

The Doctor raised an eyebrow. "I generally don't like anything Torchwood gets me involved in."

Jack winced. "Great. That makes this that much easier. Thanks, Doc."

The Doctor said nothing. Instead he folded his arms and waited. Donna looked back at Jack, who seemed to be readying himself. A strange tension seemed to have erupted between them, between the Doctor's suspicion and Jack's restless demeanour.

Finally, Jack admitted, "We're going to Canary Wharf Station."

"That's been closed for years," Donna said, frowning. "It disrupted the Jubilee line for months. Half of central London's was complaining about it. So go on then, why's it closed… off?"

She faltered when she saw that the Doctor had gone very still. His face was slowly draining of colour, and his earlier suspicion had been replaced with a haunted look she knew all too well; she'd seen it when Jenny died, when the Doctor drowned the Racnoss, and when he returned from Midnight. The dim light from Davis's lamp made the Doctor's expression, a mixture of grief and anger, look all the starker. Disquieted, Donna looked between the Doctor and Jack, who seemed to be wearing a similar expression.

The Doctor finally managed a shaky, "Jack…"

"It's not easy for me to be here either, Doctor," Jack interrupted quietly. When the Doctor remained silent, Jack managed with a half-hearted smile, "If you still think I ought to clout you, I'll happily oblige if it makes you feel better."

Donna looked at Jack in disbelief. The Doctor, though he didn't look cheered in the slightest, deflated a bit.

"You say there was an explosion here?" he finally asked. "What kind of explosion?"

Jack's expression, however, grew more serious. "It's the breach."

Donna had no idea what that meant, but she could tell from the Doctor's expression that it wasn't anything good. "What the _hell_ have you idiots done now?" he snarled.

"We didn't do _anything_ ," Jack bit back, furious. "You think that UNIT would allow it, after what happened last time?" He exhaled shakily, and then, in a softer voice, he added, "You think _I_ would, after what happened to Rose?"

So that's what this was all about, Donna realized; the strange tension the Doctor and Jack both exhibited, and their sudden, irrational anger, boiled down to the Doctor's long-dead companion. The Doctor had always been very tight-lipped about Rose, and what had killed her; and Donna had never dared to ask. Now she had a feeling she was about to find out.

Abashed, the Doctor stepped back from Jack. "Sorry," he murmured.

Jack nodded, accepting the apology. He then returned to the matter at hand. "UNIT was monitoring it, which I believe you told them to do. It's possible that someone else was messing with it, but none of us."

The Doctor looked at Davis questioningly. The soldier nodded. "That's right, sir. We kept a constant eye on it, and archived reports, but that was all. There was no unusual activity until now."

"Then what caused it?" asked the Doctor.

"We have no idea," Jack responded. "We know that there's alien involvement, but we don't know what sort of aliens. We know the breach opened, but we don't know if it was from the inside or the outside. We know that something came out of the breach, but we don't know exactly what it was."

The Doctor snorted. "Great. That's a load of information to start from."

"Look, we need you," Jack said irritably. "I don't know enough about existential trans-dimensional physics to make headway in this."

"No, you wouldn't," the Doctor shrugged. "It's way beyond you. It's even a bit beyond the Time Lords."

Jack stared at him, then sighed in frustration. "Don't tell me _you_ can't make headway either."

"Watch it," the Doctor retorted. "I can do a hell of a lot more than anyone else here."

Jack grinned. "Glad to have you here, Doc."

The tension seemed to have passed. Looking around the tunnel, Donna asked, "So why are we sneaking in? We could have just had the Tardis land there."

"Good point. Why the secrecy?" asked the Doctor. "UNIT's summoned me plenty of times, but they've never bothered _smuggling_ me in like this."

"Normally there's no need," Jack said grimly. "But during the preliminary investigation they received an anonymous recorded message warning UNIT against seeking off-world assistance, threatening Earth if they did. Specifically, it mentioned you."

The Doctor raised his eyebrows. "The aliens who caused this?"

"We think so," said Jack. "We're hoping to bring you in without these aliens realizing it.

The Doctor nodded and without further ado, he and Jack started forward at a brisk pace. "I need to see this message," he said firmly. "I assume it was recorded?"

"Of course."

Both were wearing hardened expressions, and said no more throughout the walk through the tunnel, slowed only by the need to keep an eye on their footing. Sergeant Davis held the light up high as the tunnel sloped upwards. Presently they arrived at a small, metal staircase on the side of the widening tunnel, and Donna could see a dim light somewhere ahead. Jack gestured for them to go up the stairs, which led to a short hallway. At the far end there was a metal door with a card swipe. Jack stood aside and allowed Davis to step forward, taking a card from his pocket. He swiped it, and swung the door open.

The Doctor and Donna stepped onto the platform of Canary Wharf station, with Jack and Davis close behind. The tracks were walled off, and the platform itself was full of UNIT barricades, and a number of soldiers. At the nearest barricade Donna saw Martha Jones waiting for them beside a UNIT officer Donna didn't recognize, also wearing heavy coats. They both moved to greet them.

The officer saluted Jack. "I'm glad to see you didn't get lost in the Tube, Captain," she said, smirking.

"Nope. No problems." Jack looked at the Doctor. "The guest of honour. Doctor, this is Captain Magambo."

Magambo promptly saluted him. "Sir!"

The Doctor winced, but before he could reprimand her, Martha cut him off. "Glad you could make it, Doctor."

He managed a small smile at that. Martha then looked at Donna, and pulled her into a hug.

Jack cleared his throat. "Much as I love parties and get-togethers, we've got work to do."

Magambo looked towards the escalators (which were not operating). "If you'll follow me, Doctor…"

* * *

The Doctor's own time sensitivity told him that it was evening, and the middle of winter before Magambo led him and the rest of the group out of the Tube station, but the cloud cover and tilt of Earth's axis made it even darker outside. When they stepped out from the station, a biting cold swept over them, surprising even for the current time of day, season, and weather.

"Blimey, it's freezing," Donna hissed.

The soldier, Sergeant Davis, took his coat off and offered it to Donna, who accepted it gratefully. The Doctor, less bothered by the temperature (although its unusualness worried him; his senses were better tuned to time than to the exact temperature, but he was pretty sure that it was at least negative 20), looked around the block, and soon his eyes fell upon Torchwood Tower. It was dark, and the cloud cover and snowfall seemed to obscure the upper floors, so he couldn't see any damage. Unlike the surrounding buildings, the lights were all turned off in Torchwood Tower, save for a few on the bottom ten floors.

But his eyes were drawn towards the top of the tower, even though he couldn't really see it. Where _she_ died. Since that awful day, any time the Doctor visited London he avoided looking in the direction of Britain's tallest skyscraper, not wanting a fresh reminder; and now, just when he thought he was finally beginning to recover from the loss, he had been dragged back in.

He couldn't look up at the tower for long, however, before the others began to move on, going to one of the other buildings rather than Torchwood Tower itself. It was then that he caught a metallic taste in the air, one he knew very well. _Radiation_ , he thought grimly. Not enough (at least on the ground) for there to be any cause for concern, but nonetheless present to an unusual degree. Evidently the explosion had been worse than Jack described.

Magambo and Martha led the group to a communications room on one of the lower floors, where they found Colonel Mace and Captain Price talking to another UNIT officer on a video call, on one of the display screens. The Doctor recognized the uniform of a UNIT general in the video. Neither the general, nor Mace and Price, seemed to notice the party's entry, and the Doctor supposed that the angle of the web cam was such that the general couldn't see them at all.

"…and you can tell me why you've got a Torchwood agent there with you, or why you responded to his information without consulting me first," the officer ground at Mace. He had a pronounced Alabama accent. As the Doctor slowly stepped in, he took note of the general's overall appearance. He could tell, even from the video call, that he was a tall, imposing man with a square face, a firm jaw, and an authoritative mien that gave him every appearance of a military general, to a degree that he thought even Sontaran High Command might approve; but he also had a calculating look in his eyes that made the Doctor wary of stepping into the man's view. It was like Stonewall Jackson had had a love child with Frank Underwood.

"This is a former Torchwood site and still contains a lot of old Torchwood records and equipment, some of it uncatalogued," Mace explained. "We believed it would be beneficial to get input from what little of Torchwood is left. And we do have information we may not have had otherwise, thanks to them."

"I'm aware of the information they gave you, Mace," snapped the general. "But look what has occurred. Two Thunder Horse marines are dead, Mace, and it's _because_ of this Torchwood agent."

The Doctor looked at Jack with surprise and concern. His gaze was downcast.

"What's he talking about?" he whispered.

"You'll found out soon," Jack muttered.

"I understand your reservations," Mace said, trying to sound conciliatory.

"I'd be a fool if I _didn't_ have reservations!" the general snapped.

"Dr. Jones vouches for him," Mace informed him. "She's worked with him before. She tells me he's trustworthy."

"And you're prepared to take her word on this?"

The Doctor stiffened indignantly, as did Donna and Martha.

"She is competent and trustworthy," Price defended her. "And well-recommended.

The general brushed this aside. "I'm familiar with her history, Price," he snapped impatiently. "I don't confirm appointments to UNIT without finding every detail of their background. I also don't trust _anyone_ who is even remotely connected to that Hartman bitch, which Harkness was and Dr. Jones indirectly was." Martha visibly winced, and at this point even Jack, in spite of his guilty demeanour, looked angry. But before anyone could protest, however, General Jackson-Underwood ploughed on, "If you want to bring Torchwood back into Canary Wharf just to dig up some old buried chicken-shit, then you'd better present me with a damn good reason, or it will all be on your head. Have I made myself clear?"

Mace was visibly angry but powerless. "Yes, sir," he growled.

"Good. I want your report by eight o' clock tomorrow morning, EST."

The screen went black.

"Bet you can see why I left UNIT now, Colonel," the Doctor commented.

Mace and Price turned abruptly. The former stepped forward. "Doctor. I'm very relieved to see you." He then looked at Jack and Martha. "I apologize for that."

Jack shrugged. "I'm just surprised he didn't start yelling at me as soon as I walked in."

"I don't think he could see us from that angle," Martha said. "Good thing too."

Mace looked at Magambo and Sergeant Davis. "Good work, both of you. Magambo, I need you to resume overseeing the ATOs' work."

Magambo and Davis saluted him and went back through the door. The rest of them slowly filed into the room. Once the door closed behind them, Mace said to Jack, "I've sent Mr. Jones and Ms. Cooper to the archive, try to find out all Torchwood One knew about the breach."

Jack raised his eyebrows. "They'll be at it for a while."

Mace looked at Donna. "Perhaps Miss Noble can help them. Her ability to look through records got UNIT on the right trail last time."

Donna rolled her eyes. "Shut up." But she looked rather gratified. Then, pointing at the screen, she asked, "So, who was Robert E. Lee?"

"General Jed Conner," sighed Mace. "My commanding officer."

"I'm sorry to hear it," the Doctor said wryly. He then looked between Mace, Martha, and Jack. "Well, since we're all here, I want all of you to tell me everything you know so far, everything you've been doing."

"Certainly." Mace gestured at couple of empty seats. "You and Miss Noble might as well make yourselves comfortable. There's a lot to cover."

* * *

"I know, I'm sorry," Gwen said into her phone. "I'll come home as soon as I can. It just won't be tonight."

"What's happened, exactly?" Rhys remarked on the other end.

"I can't give you any details," Gwen said. "Not this time, Rhys. This time the government's involved, and that's all I'm telling you."

She could tell that this did little to assuage Rhys's concerns, but he wouldn't ask more. "Right. Well, keep yourself safe, Gwen."

Gwen looked around the room, a vast space filled with numerous rows of filing cabinets and microfilm drawers. "I assure you, right now I think I'm safe enough," she wryly commented.

"Okay. Give me a call when you're done," Rhys said. "Love you."

"I love you too. Bye." Gwen ended the call, and stowed her phone back into her pocket. Ianto was at a computer at a carrel nearby, and she moved over to join him. "That's one duty done for the night. Pretty much the only part of this job I hate."

"Wouldn't know," Ianto said. "My love life tends involve my colleagues, so I generally don't have to explain anything to them."

"Lucky you." Gwen leaned against the carrel, watching Ianto load some microfilm into the digital reader. "So I guess we finally get to meet this Doctor bloke Jack keeps mentioning."

Ianto paused. "I can't quite believe he actually exists," he remarked. "Torchwood always made him a sort of legend, and not in a good way."

Gwen shrugged. "Jack trusts him. That's good enough for me."

Ianto returned to work and said nothing. Gwen recognized his sad expression from the weeks following Lisa Hallett's rampage and death, and fell quiet, recognizing that, for now, the topic was closed. Being present at Canary Wharf undoubtedly mired Ianto in bad memories as much as it did Jack, although Jack's connection with the Cyberman attack was more of a mystery to her, particularly this Rose Tyler, whom Jack had never mentioned before, yet her death seemed to have particularly affected him. But if Ianto was going to be tight-lipped about it, there was no doubt that Jack would _definitely_ be tight-lipped about it.

Therefore, knowing she likely wouldn't get any answers at the present time, Gwen looked from the computer monitor to the pile of reels Ianto had gathered, and asked, "So just how far back are we going to be looking?"

"Mace wants information going back to when it all started, when Torchwood One first detected the spatial disturbance," Ianto informed her. When Gwen continued to frown at him, he sighed and clarified, "That was about twenty, twenty-five years ago." Pointing at the microfilm reels, he added, "These are just the last two years before One started keeping digital records."

"You balked just from looking through our own archives covering a single summer," Gwen reminded him, smirking.

"It's a lot to cover," Ianto protested.

"We look through people's histories all the time," she pointed out.

"Torchwood's records are different," Ianto retorted. "The Torchwood archives cover just about everything, including everything in said histories we gather about people. And unlike most archives, Torchwood's didn't throw _anything_ away. They had a huge vault where they store everything from more than thirty years back, which they had to expand every now and then." He shook his head. "Twenty-five years. We're going to need a few people helping with this."

Gwen grimaced. "So how are we going to approach this?"

"For now, maybe we could start just by gathering all the relevant records. I'll look through the catalogue, and you start gathering reels."

Gwen looked back at the drawers containing thousands of microfilm reels with a pained expression. She hoped they'd soon have more people helping them with this process because this was going to take a while.

* * *

The Doctor ran his hand through his hair for what had to be the fiftieth time, leaving it thoroughly mussed. A sure sign of terrible stress and/or confusion, the others knew. He was thinking hard, but his thoughts weren't going anywhere. Jack, and Colonel Mace waited patiently. Donna, still piecing together everything they'd been briefed on, only wanted to know what all the technobabble added up to.

"This is wrong," the Doctor finally said. "All of it. This shouldn't be happening."

"I know," Jack said quietly. "I'm sorry. It should have ended that day. But we'll find out why it opened again and find a way to fix it. Hopefully for good this time."

The Doctor shook his head fervently. "This is different, Jack. This thing you saw in the breach room obviously wasn't the same. You could look at it without feeling scared or weird. There wasn't an explosion last time, but there was this time. And the Daleks' Void Ship didn't blast Torchwood Tower with ionizing radiation, but this thing did."

Mace raised his eyebrows. "Then you don't think the radiation came from the breach itself? It came from this… what did you call it?"

"Truncated icosahedron," the Doctor repeated.

Donna grimaced. "I think I prefer 'almost-sphere'."

Jack managed a small smirk at that.

"And no," the Doctor continued, ignoring them, "the radiation didn't come from the breach. It can't have. Space-time breaches do emit a form of radiation, but not ionizing radiation. I call it Void-stuff, which is harmless… to a degree." His voice wavered a little, and his expression briefly darkened again.

"Maybe," Jack conceded, "but if the radiation came from this icosahedron, then the breach room should have been the most contaminated room in the building. Yet it, and the hall outside, were completely clean."

The Doctor frowned, deep in thought. "Yes, that is odd. Perhaps your giant football reabsorbed some of the radiation." He looked at Jack questioningly. "Torchwood had been probing the breach for ages before the Void Ship came through. I don't suppose there was anything else they noticed during that time? I don't imagine Yvonne Hartman was very inclined to tell me every detail about it."

"I know as much about it as you do," Jack told him, grimacing. "That's why we've got Gwen and Ianto going through the archives."

"But you _are_ Torchwood," the Doctor said, surprised. "You weren't ever briefed on it?"

Jack sighed. "I keep telling you, Doctor, Torchwood Three is a different operation from Torchwood One. We were in communication with each other, but worked independently. After the battle, I severed all Three's remaining connections with One, not that there was much left of One to have ties with anyway."

"But before the battle?" the Doctor persisted.

"Yvonne started running the London branch about five years before the ghost shifts," Jack told them. "But even before that started, she made a point of keeping things from me."

The Doctor raised an eyebrow. "Did she know about your association with me?"

"Torchwood knew about my condition," Jack said. "They also knew that I'd been looking for you. That I repeatedly made inquiries about your whereabouts. But I never briefed them on how I knew you."

"I don't imagine it would have been to your advantage if they did," Mace said.

"To put it mildly," agreed Jack. "All the same, Hartman would have known enough to not entirely trust me. And anyway, I had opposed too many of Torchwood's past decisions. Not to mention, she was always as arrogant as she was ambitious."

Donna snorted. "Sounds like quite the work relationship. And they still kept you on all that time?"

"What can I say? I'm too useful an asset," Jack boasted. "Point is, Hartman knew full well what I thought of her. So you can imagine that she did not keep me in the loop. She certainly did not brief Torchwood Three about the appearance of the Void Ship or her plans for it." He shook his head, angry at the memory. "When the ghost shifts started, all she told us was that it was a side effect of Torchwood One's own research, and that the situation was under control. Her way of telling us to butt out, of course."

"Did you believe her?" asked the Doctor.

Jack considered his answer. "No," he said after a minute. "Or rather, I didn't believe she was as in control as she thought." He looked at the Doctor with a mildly pleading expression. "I tried, you know. I did my best to monitor the situation, figure out what was going on. But Hartman blocked most of my efforts. Most of what I do know is what you yourself told me."

The Doctor nodded, accepting this. "Jack, you didn't know Rose and I would get caught up in it."

Jack said nothing, but he still looked regretful.

"So… this breach," Donna said, steering the conversation back to the matter at hand. "It should have been closed, right? And suddenly it's open again and something pops out. I don't suppose anyone saw it happen?"

She looked at Jack and Mace curiously, and was very satisfied when they gave each other significant looks.

"Yes," Jack said quietly. "Someone did."

* * *

The Doctor, Donna, Jack, and Mace watched as Martha and Dr. Rosas tended to the scientist the Thunder Horse marines had dragged out of the rubble of the 50th floor. Strickland lay on a stretcher, sweating and shaking feverishly, as Dr. Rosas injected a drug into his shoulder.

"How much radiation did he absorb?" asked the Doctor, watching Martha wipe Strickland's sweating forehead.

"It's hard to say," answered Dr. Rosas. "His lymphocyte count is at 1,400 after nine hours, which indicates a very severe dosage. At least six or seven hundred rads, possibly more."

The Doctor looked at Strickland with a pitying expression. "How long would you say he has?"

"A few weeks at most," Rosas answered quietly. "If he absorbed more than eight hundred we're looking at two to fourteen days."

Mace nodded grimly. "I need to question him, Dr. Rosas. Is he up for it?"

Rosas hesitated. "It's not ideal."

"I'm not blind," snapped Mace. "I can see how sick he is. But by the sound of it, he's not going to get better."

"He might enter a latency period in the next couple of days," Rosas told him, "in which he might appear quite well. To be followed, unfortunately, by a steep decline he's not likely to recover from. That latency period would be the best time to interrogate him."

"I see," said Mace. "And if he absorbed a _thousand_ rads or more?"

Dr. Rosas hesitated. "Then he might not have a latency period at all," he admitted. "If he does, it will only last a few hours."

Mace nodded, fully decided. "Then wake him up."

* * *

 _A/N: Depending on how much work my classes give me, I expect Chapter 7 will be up in about one or two weeks. In which the Doctor does some investigating, and visits the site of Rose's death._


	8. Ex Nihilo, Part 1

_**A/N: This chapter is taking a bit longer to write out than I expected, so I've decided to divide it into two chapters. I'll try to post the second half within the week.**_

 _ **Thanks so much for your patience!**_

* * *

 **Chapter Seven**  
 **Ex Nihilo, Part 1**

 _A torrid current of the deep chasm filled my mind and flesh in whispers, but as I rose and fell, I passed the stages of age and youth and entered the whirlpool. My life became a blur, obscured in the current, lost to memory. I knew Nothing. I saw Nothing. I remembered Nothing. It was not clear to me if I was even alive. Nothing was in my head._

" _Oh, wretched, ephemeral race, children of chance and misery, why do you compel me to tell you what it would be more expedient for you not to hear? What is best of all is utterly beyond your reach: not to be born, not to be, to be nothing. But the second best for you is—to die soon." (1)_

 _Well, Sophocles, I have explored the option of what is best, but it is not for me. As for what is second best, that which I crave—to die, to enter the unexplored realm, be it true non-existence, or the Nether Firmament, or whatever lies beyond it, or some other undetected realm—that was snatched from me. That only leaves one option for me: to live, to go free… and for me that is the worst hell. Only fools seek immortality, and once they gain it, only fools embrace it._

* * *

"Dr. Strickland?" called Dr. Rosas gently, shaking the afflicted scientist's shoulder. "Dr. Strickland, can you hear me?"

The Doctor, Martha, and Colonel Mace waited. After a moment's silence, Strickland groaned and opened his eyes. Dr. Rosas beckoned for Martha to give him a hand, and together they pulled him into a sitting position. Strickland raised his head, looking at his visitors blearily. His gaze passed over Dr. Rosas and Martha, then Mace, and finally lingered on the Doctor, but he said nothing.

Moving in front of him, Dr. Rosas loudly enunciated, "Dr. Strickland, do you know who I am?"

Strickland's gaze moved from the Doctor to the physician. For a moment he only gave a shuddering sigh, green-faced, but then his face contorted into an annoyed scowl. "You're Javier Rosas, you great bloody fool," he growled.

Dr. Rosas smiled humorlessly. Turning to Mace, he said, "He's at least aware of himself."

"And my surroundings," Strickland said, looking at the concrete walls and then the two-way mirror, where the Doctor knew Donna and Jack were watching. "I was expecting to wake up in a hospital, not an interrogation room," he said dryly.

"And yet you don't seem very shocked," said Mace, stepping forward. "I suppose you've realized why we've brought you here?"

"I can only assume that I'm your only eyewitness," Strickland responded.

Instead of answering, Mace looked at Dr. Rosas sternly. "Leave us," he ordered.

Dr. Rosas hesitated. "If I might be frank, sir, he might need me on hand."

Mace waved this aside. "Dr. Jones can help with any medical difficulties while we're questioning him."

Dr. Rosas nodded resignedly. "Fair enough. There's a bin under his stretcher, in case he vomits or has diarrhea. Which he probably will."

It was a mark both of the seriousness of the situation and of the grimness of their jobs that no one so much as grimaced, although Strickland grumbled in frustration, "Bloody disgusting." Nobody said anything else until Dr. Rosas was out of the room, but as soon as the door closed behind him, Mace looked at the irradiated patient and began, "It's astounding you're even alive, let alone coherent, after being pinned under rubble in a highly contaminated zone for at least an hour before they found you."

Strickland scowled at him. "Why beat around the bush, colonel? I assume you want to know what happened in the breach room."

Mace raised his eyebrows but his expression remained neutral otherwise. "It certainly would be helpful."

Strickland frowned, probably struggling to remember. The Doctor, for his part, thought with some frustration back to the Tardis, where he had drugs that could inoculate humans from the effects of radiation; but unfortunately they did nothing to aide in ARS treatment once the illness had set in, especially in cases this far gone. They had only to hope that Strickland continued to be as coherent as he seemed at present.

After a few minutes, Strickland seemed to have gathered his thoughts enough to respond, "Dr. Bachchan and I were monitoring the breach, as we usually do. As I reported, we were monitoring the fluctuations that have been happening for the past couple of"—

"So you _did_ report it?" Mace interrupted.

Strickland frowned, and opened his mouth to answer. Before he could continue, however, he suddenly turned very green, and Martha quickly thrust a bin into his hands, just in time for Strickland to retch into it. They waited, ignoring the noise and the smell. When it passed, Martha offered Strickland a water bottle. After he took a swig and spat into the bin, he looked back at Mace.

"Sorry," he said with feebleness and frustration in equal measure. He swallowed a bit, and sipped the water, before continuing, "Of course I bloody reported it. Why wouldn't I? Mind you, I didn't ever receive any kind of response from Magambo's staff."

"Of that, I have no doubt," Mace said coolly. "So what happened then?"

Strickland leaned his head back. "The fluctuations were getting stronger. I was about to raise the alarm, but then our instruments went haywire, and the breach wall began to light up. Bright. Like burning magnesium."

The Doctor bowed his head down, remembering that exact phenomenon. Meanwhile, Strickland continued, "It built up fast. Exponentially. It was completely out of control. I tried to get out of there before it blew, but only got a little past the doorway when it went off." He shook his head. "I don't remember much after that."

"I see," Mace said. "So you didn't actually see the explosion, although I imagine that if you were still in the breach room, you wouldn't have survived."

"I'd say that's a fair assessment," Strickland growled.

Mace said nothing. For a few minutes the room was quiet. The Doctor looked at Martha, and she returned his gaze with a somber grimace, before looking at Mace. The UNIT officer's neutral expression had turned cold, and he held up a manila folder for Strickland to see. "Interesting," he said. "Your story does seem to hold water… except for a strange discrepancy." He opened the folder and held up some stapled papers. "Captain Price handed this to me just before Dr. Rosas removed you to this room. Know what it is?"

Strickland said nothing.

"A record of all your e-mails, texts, and voice messages to Magambo and her staff for the past two weeks, as well as Dr. Bachchan's," Mace informed him. "I had Findlay start putting all this together as soon as we realized there was evidence that the breach had been building in energy. yet neither my staff nor Magambo's received any report of it. It was Torchwood that informed me, you know."

"From Cardiff?" asked Strickland blithely. "Says a lot more about UNIT's efficiency than Torchwood's."

Mace ignored him. "And _this_ ," he said, holding up another sheet of paper, "is a record Findlay was able to extract from your database from up through the explosion. Lucky you keep a backup of your readings outside the tower. Your efficiency knows no bounds. Undoubtedly it's why Magambo recruited you. You can play innocent all you like, Dr. Strickland. But we know neither you nor Bachchan ever said a single word to your commanding officers about the breach emissions." He leaned forward, and said in a dangerous voice, "I want to know why."

The Doctor watched Strickland carefully throughout all this. He wasn't sure what he'd expected from the scientist; fear, anger, denial, the usual babble that streamed from the mouths of those wrongdoers who had been caught. But what he hadn't expected was for a perturbingly cold, unconcerned smile to stretch across Strickland's face.

"Clever," he said condescendingly. "I've never really thought very highly of UNIT, but you do have your moments."

"So you won't even deny it," Mace said in a dangerously angry voice. "You knew about the emissions, yet you didn't think it worth reporting?"

"Unless he didn't want UNIT interfering in something happening up there," the Doctor interrupted, speaking for the first time since the interview started. "What the hell were you doing up there?" he demanded furiously. "Were you _trying_ to open the breach?"

Strickland began laughing coldly. "Do give me some credit," he said. "Why would I do that? I know the risk the damn thing poses as much as anyone here does. And believe me when I say that I don't want to see this planet collapse into oblivion any more than you do."

"Then what"—Mace began, but Strickland cut him off. Looking at the Doctor, he sneered, "Don't tell me that the great _Doctor_ didn't detect anything. The emissions? They've been building up for a while. At first it was so small that it was barely noticeable, but they got increasingly stronger. The pressure wasn't coming from anything I or UNIT or anyone on Earth were doing. The pressure on the breach came from within, literally _ex nihilo_. I merely probed it. Perhaps that was all it needed."

The Doctor swallowed. "What do you mean?"

Strickland smirked. A bead of sweat ran down his temple. "You who know so much. A time rift, like the one in Cardiff, opens. It closes. It leaves a fault line. What makes you think a breach in the skin of space-time is any different? That breach is a weak spot. And something found that weak spot. Something is pushing through. Or was. Something screaming for release. Don't tell me _you,_ with your fabulous time ship that everyone at UNIT talks about, _didn't_ detect it."

The Doctor stared at him, as an icy feeling seemed to claw through him. He'd detected nothing. By Rassilon, he'd detected nothing. The strangeness that the Tardis hadn't picked up on anything of this magnitude happening on Earth bothered him, to the degree that he didn't want to believe anything Strickland was saying. Why would he not report this? Why would the Tardis not detect it? Why were there no other warnings?

 _And why,_ he wondered as he looked at the other interrogators in the room, _is Martha fidgeting like that, like she herself knows something_?

Mace seemed to have had enough. He stepped right up to Strickland, towering over him, and snarled, "Tell me, right now, why you didn't report this, why you didn't want UNIT interfering."

Strickland only laughed again, although his face was turning paler. "You have nothing over me," he said, and the Doctor noted a tremor in his voice. "No interrogation method, no torture, can match the kind of pain I will be suffering for the next few days, and no medicine will alleviate it or cure my condition. But I am interested in seeing what you can discover even as you try to extract information from me in that time."

Mace's face turned red. He opened his mouth to retort, but then the Doctor noticed that Strickland continued to shake violently, even after he stopped laughing. The man was drenched in sweat, his face a grayish pallor, and flecks of vomit lined the corners of his mouth. His entire body quivered with pain and fever. He was also covered with abrasions from the rubble he'd been dug out of. But in spite of his injuries, his obviously fatal illness, his eyes were alert, challenging, and the Doctor knew that he was completely serious. He would tell them nothing, because they had nothing either to give him or to threaten him with.

Even as the Doctor watched, Strickland's shaking got worse, and then he cried out in pain.

"Damn it," Mace snarled as Martha immediately placed her hand on Strickland's forehead and thrust her stethoscope under the collar of his hospital gown. Finally, Strickland gave a shuddering groan, and slumped in a dead faint.

* * *

Half an hour had passed, in which Dr. Rosas informed them that Strickland's condition had become critical, and he likely would be in no condition for further interrogation for the time being. The Doctor stood at the window of the empty conference room, in equal measures of frustration and disquiet. Strickland's words had shaken him greatly, had left him to wonder if it was irresponsible of him to leave monitoring the breach in UNIT's hands and never follow up on it or pay attention to it. But taking that responsibility meant a lot of pain. It meant owning up to what his actions had cost that day. It meant remembering Rose, and coming to terms with what had happened to her.

So he ran, not looking back, like he always did. Perhaps Margaret the Slitheen had been right about him all along. Perhaps the choice the Dalek Emperor presented him with had meant nothing in the end: he was a coward as much as he was a killer; and he was so much a coward that until the fate of the Earth and the Universe forced him, he couldn't even face _that_ truth: that he was not one, not the other, but _both_.

Even in death, Rose Tyler was once again forcing him to see hard truths about himself.

The Doctor sighed and leaned his head in his hands, unsure if he should give into his impulse to try to think of something else, or ignore that impulse because it was at the very heart of his worst flaw. It was all he could do at the present moment; with UNIT's equipment destroyed, he couldn't monitor the breach without the Tardis or equipment he kept on the Tardis. Mace, Magambo, and Price, torn between their determination to keep the Doctor's presence at Canary Wharf secret for as long as possible, and his need for the time ship, had promised to find a way to smuggle the Tardis into Canary Wharf (and perhaps they were already at it), but it was taking time. For the present moment he wasn't sure he was ready to visit the site of the breach yet, which left him with little to do except brood over Strickland's words.

The sound of a door opening therefore was a welcome reprieve from his thoughts, and the Doctor looked up to see Donna enter the room with a thermos in hand, which she handed to him.

"What's this? Tea?" he asked, opening the thermos and sniffing.

Donna nodded. "Thought you could use it."

The Doctor stared at the beverage for a moment, and then took a small sip. Immediately a lump lodged itself in his throat, and he quietly screwed the lid back on the thermos. Tea made him think of Jackie Tyler. Yet another reminder.

Donna, watching him sympathetically, said quietly, "I'm sorry. This must be very hard for you."

The Doctor looked downward. "I never thought I'd come back here," he admitted. "Perhaps I should have known better."

Donna's brow furrowed as she tried to understand him. If she did, a moment later she still hadn't let on. The Doctor then looked back up at her. "It's been very quiet. Where is everyone?"

"Gone to get some sleep somewhere," Donna said. "Martha and Jack's team have all been here since the explosion and that was like twelve hours ago."

"You humans and your need for sleep," the Doctor said scathingly.

"Yes," snorted Donna, "we've all heard it before. If it makes you feel any better, Jack doesn't seem to have joined them, although I have no idea where he ran off to." She took a seat next to the Doctor and fell silent for a moment, seemingly reflecting over the day, and finally said, "That Strickland bloke was a lot more lucid than I was expecting."

"Yeah," the Doctor said slowly, thinking back. "I did notice that."

"Why do you think he did it?" she asked. "Cover up the energy bursts, I mean?"

The Doctor considered her question, thinking about Strickland's lack of concern for his actions, his cold smiles and laughter, and his obvious contempt for Colonel Mace and for UNIT. "Who knows?" he said after a moment. "Findlay has been gathering together Strickland's history, but nothing to explain his actions today. He's worked at UNIT for nearly twenty years, and was one of UNIT's leading authorities in quantum mechanics as well as astrophysics, which undoubtedly was why they wanted him to monitor the breach." With a sigh, he added, "We may never know that. There's always a possibility that he won't recover enough to tell us, even if he was willing to."

"Isn't there any medicine on the Tardis you could give him?" asked Donna.

"Not at this stage," the Doctor told her. "There's too much damage already." Seeing her face fall, he added, "At any rate, Strickland's actions actually should be the least of our concerns. If he was telling the truth, then Earth may be under a very serious threat."

Donna frowned at him. "I got that bit about the Earth possibly collapsing into the breach, but how do you know that these aliens are any more dangerous than the other aliens we've dealt with?"

"Because of the sort of aliens who would be able to traverse the Void and burst through its weak spots," the Doctor said quietly. "Such a race would almost certainly be very powerful, possibly even more powerful than the Time Lords were." Seeing Donna's questioning expression, he added, "The Void was one of the great mysteries to the Time Lords. They never fully understood it, they couldn't quite grasp its nature. Being a place without time, it was the very opposite of the Time Lords' understanding of the universe. We had theories about it but little else. We certainly couldn't navigate it."

"You were able to go to that parallel world you told me about, though," Donna said. "Isn't the Void what separates universes?"

The Doctor nodded. "There's a difference between popping between universes and traveling the Void," he explained. "Think of it like two rooms separated by… oh, I don't know, a big tank of water. To get to the other room you'd have to have a tunnel through the water tank. Stepping through that tunnel would not be the same as entering into the water tank and swimming inside it."

Donna nodded slowly. "And the breach only opens into the Void?"

"Yes and no," the Doctor said. "Strickland described it as fault lines. If the breach into the Void is the main fault line, then the openings into parallel worlds are smaller faults branching off from the main. I suppose it's possible that the breach reopening today may have opened those other fractures, but not necessarily."

"And these aliens that came out of it?" asked Donna nervously. "If they're as powerful as you think, how much danger would they be to Earth?"

"That depends entirely on their intentions," the Doctor said. "But if they're hostile, then we're almost certainly facing something as potentially deadly as the Dalek attack two years ago, if not worse." He shut his eyes tightly. "And I have to find out who they are and what they want, possibly find a way to send them back, and seal the breach again, this time permanently. Otherwise Rose might have died for nothing."

Donna remained quiet, clearly having no idea what to say. The door opening either prevented her from doing just that, or saving her from the needed obligation. Colonel Mace wandered in, and the Doctor considered Donna's earlier words about the others needing sleep. He certainly looked it, judging from the dark rings forming around his eyes and his pale demeanor. As the Doctor and Donna watched, Mace withdrew a hip flask from his pocket and took a heavy swig.

"That's going to make you more tired," the Doctor said.

Mace snorted. "Maybe I need it to," he growled. "I shouldn't be drinking while on duty, but I think the occasion calls for it." He offered the Doctor the flask. "Want any?"

"Yes, but that doesn't mean I think it's a good idea to have any right now."

"Suit yourself," Mace said, pocketing his flask. "Harkness is downstairs looking at whatever Ianto Jones pulled up from the archives, although it doesn't sound like they've found anything useful yet." Without another word, he moved over to the computer and began opening files. "At least we know from Strickland that, at least to his knowledge, the breach opening had nothing to do with human activity," he said. A moment later, he opened an audio file, and the recording the Doctor had heard during his briefing earlier that day came on again. " _United Intelligence Taskforce, you step to your planet's defence_ _admirably. Your efforts are laudable, but they must remain yours alone. Know that things are now in motion, which you cannot prevent. You have an ally of off-world origin for whom you will presently be tempted to call. But should you summon the Time Lord who calls himself the Doctor, you must prepare yourself for repercussions. Call for him and you imperil this world. You have been warned."_

Mace turned the recording off. "What's your take on it, now that we've spoken to Strickland?"

The Doctor shook his head. "I don't recognize the voice any more than I did two hours ago," he admitted. "Sounds human enough, but then again, _I_ probably sound human enough."

"And they know about you," Donna added. "Well enough to consider you a threat, anyway."

The Doctor nodded slowly. "The fact that they could so thoroughly scramble their signal or block your own signals, even Martha's phone, fits with the level of technology they would have needed to emerge from the breach."

"Do you think it's Daleks again?" asked Mace in professionally-forced calm.

The Doctor thought for a moment, then shook his head. "The only thing this incident has in common with the Daleks is the breach and the appearance of a similar object to their sphere. But the cloaked style of attack, and the nature of this object, was drastically different from all my previous experiences with Daleks. No, this is something new. Which makes it almost as dangerous, perhaps _more_ dangerous."

Mace considered all this, and then began, "So who else have you"—

His voice trailed away, however, as a light beeping drew their attention.

"What's that?" asked the Doctor.

"Some signal coming through," Mace said, standing abruptly. "Just when I sent Findlay to get some sleep too. Doctor, could you"—

The Doctor was already on it. Dashing to the computer making the noise, he began typing away at the keyboard, then pulled up the alert and clicked a display option. The display screens immediately lit up, and as one, the three of them stared at the largest screen.

At first all they could see was a flurry of motion, and the only sound was yelling and what sounded like gunfire and plasma weapons of some kind. The Doctor squinted at the image. The source of the image stopped moving momentarily, long enough for the Doctor to see a dark humanoid figure in a helmet and visor coming at the camera or whatever it was with a weapon drawn. Then a bionic left hand seized the assailant's weapon and an organic right hand strike out fiercely, and he realized that he was seeing the viewpoint of the victim of the attack. The assailant stumbled back and the left hand, still gripping the weapon, twist the assailant's arm violently. He saw a foot kick out, causing the assailant to fall back, disarmed.

Then he heard a howl of pain, a gravelly, mechanical yet feminine voice, then the image turned and he saw two other similarly addressed people, likewise armed. One of them seemed to have seized hold of the broadcaster's arm, but like a wild animal, her right fist struck at them again. The image became more frenzied, and he supposed she, whoever she was, was thrashing around. A male voice called out, "Hold her down!"

As the Doctor watched, the image suddenly turned bright as the broadcaster was forced to look upwards at a brightly-lit ceiling, and the three—no, four—assailants pinned her down. The image still jerked around, presumably as _she_ did, and soon a fifth person, a large, burly, female figure, loomed over her with another weapon in hand, carefully aimed it right at the victim's face, and fired in a bright flash of bluish-white light, followed by another gravelly cry of pain.

Instead of the image cutting out, it started to fade, then blinked to black. But they could hear the woman who'd fired the weapon say in a muffled voice, "That ought to keep her quiet for a while."

"Sure hope so," another voice, fading as the broadcaster slipped into unconsciousness. "God, it was like trying to hold down a tiger."

"Then get her to base before she can start calling out for help again," the woman said. "We'll need her conscious for"—

But at that point, the voices became increasingly unintelligible, and finally the broadcast cut out entirely.

* * *

(1) Sophocles, _Oedipus in Colonus,_ via Friedrich Nietzsche's _The Birth of Tragedy_.

* * *

 _A/N: Stay tuned! We'll be getting to the really fun stuff soon._


	9. Ex Nihilo, Part 2

_#_

Chapter Eight  
Ex Nihilo, Part 2

 _This is not your end. In this, at least, you and I are allies. I do not know who these Meddlers are or what they want of us, but if they thought we have anything but nothing to give them, they will soon realize. But they will never understand beyond this. It is quite beyond the ability of man to comprehend that there is great value and potential and power to nothingness. If they do not yet know what they have in their grasp, believe me, before long they_ _will_ _understand its power._

* * *

Jack stared at the display screen intently, mulling over what he'd just seen. After a moment, he asked, "Could you play it again?"

Colonel Mace, astoundingly still awake, though keeping on his feet rather than sitting in order to remain that way, hit the play button, and they watched the forty-three-second transmission for the third time. Jack watched it, listening to the shouts and the sounds of both gunfire and plasma-fire. Then came the scream, and Jack instantly recognized the voice that emitted it. He sat up in his chair. "There. Rewind it to twenty-two seconds."

Mace did so, replaying the roar of pain from the gravelly, bionic female voice. As it sounded, Jack saw the Doctor watching him curiously.

"Does it mean something to you?" he asked.

Jack nodded. "I think I've heard that voice before. This morning, on the Torchwood intercoms, right after we started detecting the breach's energy emissions… basically, the emissions interfered with our equipment, blocking out almost everything, but then we started hearing that voice on the intercom."

"Why didn't you mention this before?" asked the Doctor. "It can't be a coincidence."

"Actually, it's perfectly possible that it's something unrelated that's happening at the same time," Jack said reasonably.

"You really think that?" asked Donna sarcastically.

"No, I don't," he answered coolly. "Just throwing that out there. And for the record, if I'd really thought the voice itself was related I would have brought it up immediately. But when it stopped and didn't come back on I thought it was probably a stray signal. We get those a lot. I found the energy emissions themselves a lot more interesting."

"Never mind that," the Doctor interrupted impatiently. "What did it say?"

Jack paused, thinking back to the strange voice briefly sounding on their speakers, struggling to remember. He had admittedly forgotten about it and its words in the midst of everything that had followed, but now, thinking about it, he could recall the gist of it, if not its exact words. "I think it started with 'Remember me, in case I do not'"—

"Which you obviously didn't," snorted Donna.

Rather than respond, Jack shot her a stern, warning look, and continued, "It then said something about wandering in eternal darkness and oblivion. It asked if there was an end to it, I think, and then if someone, whoever it was addressing, had forgotten something." He looked at the Doctor closely. "You think it's that important?"

The Doctor nodded uncertainly. "I think everything's important. Since we've just received this, I think we can discard the possibility that it was just a stray signal. Although I'd like to do a voice analysis, just to confirm it's the same voice. I don't suppose you recorded it?" He eyed Jack's Vortex Manipulator as he asked.

"Everything broadcast to Torchwood gets recorded automatically," Jack said, "although given the emissions were interfering with all our stuff, the recording might have failed."

The Doctor sighed. "I don't suppose it's too big a risk to take the Tardis there and get it?"

It was Mace who answered. "I won't presume to tell you what to do, Doctor, but if you want my opinion, I think you should use the Tardis as seldom as possible. We want you to avoid detection for"—

"As long as possible, I remember," the Doctor said grumpily.

"And I suspect that if these aliens are watching UNIT, it won't be long before they start watching Torchwood as well," continued Mace. He paused, and covered a heavy yawn, before continuing, "Assuming they haven't been already, that is."

"So how do you suggest we get this recording?" Donna asked Mace, although she was also looking at Jack.

"Actually," Jack said, "I was thinking of sending one of my team back to Cardiff. If there's anything we know for a certainty today, it's that the breach affects the Rift. With UNIT's equipment wrecked, it might be a good idea to monitor the breach as best we can from the Rift."

"The Tardis can monitor it too," the Doctor said.

"How close to the breach does it have to be?" asked Jack.

The Doctor hesitated. "It is possible that it won't be able to get the most accurate readings from its present location," he grudgingly admitted.

"Short of you flying it there, there's no way to get the Tardis up to the fiftieth floor unseen," Mace cut in. "And I don't think there's any way to hide it materializing up there if our alien friends are watching that floor."

The Doctor sighed. "Oh, all right. I'll have to monitor it with handheld equipment. And it's probably a good idea to keep an eye on the Rift anyway, if the breach is connected to it in some way."

"Good," Mace said, satisfied. "In the meantime, what do you propose doing next?"

Jack watched the Doctor curiously. With Strickland almost comatose, and there being nothing else to brief the Doctor on (as far as he was aware), there was only one more thing the Doctor could do to make headway, probably the thing he'd been secretly hoping to put off for as long as possible. Sure enough, after a long, pregnant moment, the Doctor looked up and said quietly, "I need to go up there and have a look at the breach myself."

Mace looked at the Doctor intently, then nodded. "Magambo will provide you with a radiation suit. Oh, and after she does, tell her to get some sleep."

Jack looked at Mace. "I'm going to accompany him up there. I'm not sure I'm of much further use down here at the moment."

Mace furrowed his brow, looking at Jack in a contemplative (if also tired) expression. Then he said, "Very well. I still have reservations after what happened earlier today, but I admit you two are probably the only qualified experts who can make headway up there. So I trust you'll keep each other in line." He yawned again.

"Thanks. You, however, should get some sleep too," Jack told him sternly. "You look like you're going to keel over any second. Haven't you got anyone to take over for you for now?"

Mace nodded. "Magambo's deputy can take over for both of us at least for a few hours."

He looked both relieved and uncertain about taking this respite. Satisfied, Jack then looked back to the Doctor, and saw that he had moved to the window, looking up at the dark edifice rising in the center of Canary Wharf, its top floors almost completely shrouded in nightfall and snow clouds.

As Jack watched, Donna approached the Doctor, and asked in a soft, concerned voice, "Is there anything I can do?"

The Doctor finally turned and looked at Donna with a sad, almost tortured expression, but his demeanor was equally adamant. He shook his head firmly. "I only want Jack up there with me. I'm sorry, Donna, but I don't think you should come with me this time." He looked back up the window. "This is too… personal."

Donna looked between the pair of them, and then said to Jack quietly, "You knew her too, I understand?"

Jack said nothing, but he could tell that she understood, and he was grateful. Looking back at the Doctor, she said, "All right. But I do want to help."

Hearing her, Mace said, "Last I saw, Ianto Jones was still awake. You could take over from him in going through the Torchwood One records while he takes a few hours' rest, although I want him back up at 0500 hours. He'll tell you what we're looking for."

Looking pleased, Donna said, "Now that I _can_ do."

Mace smiled. "I know. I remember." He then yawned again, this time for much longer than before. Then he shook his head, and said to the Doctor and Jack, "Make sure Captain Buchtel knows to take over for a few hours before you head back up there. I'm going to get some sleep."

* * *

It was pitch black in the hallway beyond the landing of the 50th floor. Presumably the ATOs had found the building fuse box because the wires were no longer sparking, and the smoke had cleared. The Doctor and Jack, both in the specialty radiation suits the Thunder Horse squad had used earlier that day, cautiously made their way down the hall, the lights on their helmets lit. The only sound, apart from their footsteps and the occasional clatter as their feet made contact with debris on the floor, was the crackling of the Geiger counter in Jack's hands.

"Radiation level is still very high," Jack said, reading the device. "No change from earlier today, though I suppose that's only to be expected, really. We don't have much of a draft in here. Even if we did, they're going to have to completely seal off the upper floors and the exterior walls."

"Like Chernobyl," the Doctor observed, looking over Jack's shoulder. "Although the contamination isn't nearly as bad or as widespread. You were very lucky."

Jack lowered the Geiger counter and pointed ahead. "It's this way."

The Doctor only answered grimly, "I know."

They continued in silence. For the Doctor, coming closer to the site, even with his heightened time sense, seemed to take an eternity. It was said on Gallifrey that this phenomenon, in which time felt slower than it was when in an emotional or stressful situation, was simply a condition of mortality, that all who could experience death had to go through, even the Time Lords, who eventually came to death once their bodies had exhausted their capacity to regenerate. A condition of mortality, walking what felt like an eternity, to the site where he once looked into the gateway into infinite emptiness.

 _There is no life in the Void. Only death._ _(1_ _)_

Jack then stopped abruptly as they turned a corner, and bent his head downwards, shining the helmet-light on the floor. "Yes," he said. "There it is."

He bent down over the shard of Dalek polycarbide. The Doctor too squatted down for a better look.

"This was the first one you spotted?" he asked.

"Yeah, although they're all over the upper floors," Jack said. "Magambo's told us since our initial sweep that the ATOs have found hundreds of them in the lower floors and even in the plaza outside that fell with the debris. A few of the Daleks or Cyberman were somewhat better intact, although all were dead."

"Like I told you," the Doctor said sullenly, "in the end nothing can survive in the Void." As he spoke, he picked up the piece and looked it over.

"Careful," Jack said. "It's extremely radioactive."

"I'm a bit more resistant than humans," the Doctor said matter-of-factly. "Between that and the suit, I'll be fine."

"If you say so," said Jack coolly.

"I do say so," the Doctor said. He then took out his sonic screwdriver and began running a scan of the shard. When he finished, he looked at the result. The Time Lords had never had an exact measurement for the residual "void stuff", as he'd called it, instead using the old _omicron_ unit. He'd never used in this way before, though, and had to program a control point to mark the size of the unit. When he was finished, he looked back at Jack and asked, "Has anyone attempted to clear out any of these?"

"No, at least not in the building. The head of the ATO squad told Magambo not to, I understand. He said their position would help them map out the blast pattern."

"And he was right," the Doctor said in a satisfied voice. "Perhaps more right than he realized. Can you map out that data on that contraption on your arm?"

"Sure," Jack said, and promptly pulled off the gauntlet of his suit, undoing his Vortex Manipulator, before replacing the gauntlet and then strapping the device around his armored wrist instead. The Doctor had started a little when he did so, before remembering that while Jack had no reason to fear the radiation except for the misery of poisoning, and even if that happened, he had a quick remedy in the holster strapped to his leg: the direct result of Jack's last real encounter with Rose, though he hadn't exactly been conscious for it. Then the Doctor stopped that thought in its tracks. He wouldn't be of real use here if he allowed himself to constantly dwell on the past. But perhaps the task of mapping out the Dalek and Cyberman pieces would keep him focused.

Eventually Jack opened up a hologram of the three-dimensional schematics of the upper floors.

"Right," Jack said to himself, pressing numbers into the device. "Putting in the coordinates, and…"

A red dot appeared in their exact location.

"That's the shard." Jack said. "Anything else you want me to put in the metadata?"

"Dalek polycarbide, hull of base segment," the Doctor answered promptly. "34.35698 omicrons per gram."

"Is that a unit I should know?" asked Jack dryly, as he did as directed.

"I'm not following any particular standard," the Doctor said. "The Time Lords used the unit 'omicron' to measure the residual radiation time travelers absorb. The Void also leaves a residue, although the Time Lords never really had a separate unit for it. So I just made up a standard."

Jack raised an eyebrow. "And what are you using for the control 'omicron?'"

"Me," the Doctor answered simply. He set down the Dalek piece, and stood up.

Jack did so as well, but still looking at the polycarbide shard, he said, "The fact that almost all these Dalek remains are in pieces," he said, "indicates that they were dead long before the explosion, because any shielding must have been nonexistent."

The Doctor nodded. "They also had no coordinates. I think, judging from what we've seen here, most of them appeared near the breach, but it's possible that you'll find odd pieces outside Canary Wharf." He looked back at the shard. "Even without the shielding, however, it must have been one hell of an explosion to blast a Dalek to pieces like that." He then frowned, and looked around at the walls, shining his light around, assessing the damage. It would indeed have taken a huge blast to do that to even an unshielded Dalek, but, heavy as the damage to the building was, this didn't look like the indicated "hell of an explosion".

"What are you thinking?" asked Jack.

"Nothing quite yet," the Doctor said honestly. "Early theory, but I'll tell you when I'm more certain."

They moved on then, and this time, now that he had a concrete task at hand, the trip seemed shorter. Before long, after turning another corner, they came to the dead Cyberman Jack and the team of marines had discovered. The Doctor paused before it, shining his light on it, and examining it closely. He then ran the sonic screwdriver over the steel alloy, scanning for the signature residue, filtering out the ionizing radiation that riddled the cybernetic construct. As he worked, the Doctor noticed something off about the Cyberman's metal armor, and moved his head, shining his light at its arm at a different angle. Yes, there, near the shoulder, the metal was smoothly warped, and the aesthetic juts and angles in the armor were nearly gone, flattened. He then looked at the Cyberman's head. The handlebar pieces were gone, but there he could see that the circular eye-piece had slightly bent inward, making the eye more elliptical than circular, and the metal jutting on the head had also flattened.

His scan finished, the Doctor read the results to Jack: "235.679 omicrons," he said.

Jack typed these results into his schematic, where he'd already programmed a new dot. "That's a bit of a jump from that Dalek piece."

"Yes, that is rather curious," the Doctor said thoughtfully. "I wish I could have scanned their residue levels back when they first attacked Canary Wharf; might have given me some idea why this Cyberman's level is so much higher than that Dalek's back there. Still, it's something to think about."

"Done, then?" asked Jack.

"Not quite," the Doctor said, and then, eyeing the odd warping in the Cyberman's shape at the shoulders and head, he then ran a cursory anatomical scan, trying to detect signs of the artificially-grown organic matter he knew was woven throughout the Lumic Cybermen's bodies as a central nervous system. But he found nothing. Nothing except…

The Doctor then looked upward and, noting an opened seam in the Cyberman's forehead, reached forward and, using the sonic to loosen the edges of the seam, began trying to pull it open. He could sense Jack watching him as he worked, but neither spoke until the Doctor managed to pry the head open. Almost immediately he saw black dust fall from the opening. The Doctor stepped back and looked around for something he could use as a stool; but unfortunately he couldn't see anything that would do. So he stepped on a piece of debris underneath the Cyberman and hopped up, grasping its head and trying to force it downward with his own weight. There was a dull creaking snap as the head bent forward, but it was enough. The Doctor couldn't see directly into the opening from his angle, it was enough for them to see a black, carbonized mass within.

"Thought so," the Doctor said grimly.

Jack took a look. "Its brain?"

"It's charcoal," the Doctor said. "There's no organic matter left in this Cyberman, it's all burned up." He pointed at the misshapen arm piece, and at the smoothed jutting on the head. "The metal's warped too; that's what tipped me off." He pointed his thumb over his shoulder, back towards the hallway where they'd examined the Dalek piece. "I couldn't quite see it with the first specimen; Dalek polycarbide is pretty heat resistant, but this particular group of Cybermen are constructed from a steel alloy; a unique one developed in that parallel universe, that melts at a much higher temperature than stainless steel, but steel nonetheless"—

"And steel warps when it encounters intense heat," Jack finished.

"Evidently it was hot enough not only to bend the steel outside, but completely incinerate the organic matter inside," the Doctor observed. "Although it doesn't appear to have been quite hot enough to melt the steel, although pretty close." He stepped back, and then looked at the plaster the Cyberman was submerged in. The edges of the break pattern were blackened. "Superheated when it appeared here," he observed. "That's interesting."

The pair of them stared at the Cyberman for another minute, ideas chasing each other in the Doctor's mind: the explosion was hotter than they'd realized? But then the damage would be far greater than what he had seen so far, and it didn't explain why Strickland was found near the epicenter with injuries no greater than a few minor abrasions and burns; although perhaps he was somehow sheltered from the blast. It would make more sense if the Cyberman had been stuck in a kerosene fire, hot enough to warp, soften, and weaken steel, even enough to collapse a building under certain circumstances if the trusses weren't insulated or if the insulation had been stripped off—that was what had caused the World Trade Center towers to collapse, after all—but this wasn't a kerosene explosion. For that matter, he wasn't sure what kind of explosion it was. He'd seen breaches in space-time before; this was the first time he'd ever known one to explode outward in this way. He didn't know enough yet to come to any conclusions. He needed more data.

Therefore, after a moment's silence, he said, "Let's go," to Jack, and then led the way forward to where he remembered the breach room to be. The entire way there, they observed Dalek and Cyberman pieces on the floor or embedded in the walls or ceiling, They moved slowly, occasionally stopping to record data on pieces, although the Doctor, knowing that he couldn't put off investigating the breach room forever, chose to only scan larger, more easily identifiable pieces, such as a Cyberman's leg or a Dalek's broken manipulator arm; enough to get at least a preliminary mapping. They could get a more complete survey later.

Before long they arrived at a large heap of debris that almost rose to the ceiling, although a large opening had been dug through it. The Doctor made to clamber through it, and as he did, he heard Jack say, "This is where we found Strickland. It was about 600 rads in here… still is, actually. But it's almost perfectly clean on the other side."

The Doctor carefully stepped through the hole and slid down the debris on the other side. Jack soon followed him through. Almost immediately the Geiger counter went silent, and they both pulled their helmets off. The Doctor could smell burned wood and plastic, but it was slightly faded, undoubtedly as a consequence of the area cooling down. No sooner had they done so when the sound of footsteps met their ears, and they saw a man in an identical armored radiation suit to theirs approaching them. He was holding a folded sheet of paper in his left hand.

"You're Harkness and the 'Doctor', I take it," he said, shaking hands with both of them in turn as he spoke. "I'm Caldwell, head of the ATO squad. Buchtel said you were coming."

"Pleasure," said Jack. "What have you got to report?"

"Well, it's very interesting, and unusual," Caldwell began. "If you'll follow me, I think I can give you a better idea of what we've worked out."

He then led the way forward, through the exact hallway Jack undoubtedly had taken the Thunder Horse marines through, before their ambush and murders, and the Doctor braced himself and followed. Before he even truly knew it, he was there. With a warning to watch their footing, Caldwell stepped cautiously over the same threshold the Doctor himself had walked out from two years earlier after closing the breach. Jack, having already been there, followed without hesitation. The Doctor, however, paused for a few seconds to take a deep breath, preparing himself for this moment, and then he too stepped through the doorway and set foot in the Breach Room of Torchwood Tower.

Standing on the ledge where the marines had been killed, the Doctor stared in amazement at the collapsed floor, the rubble, the wreckage of tables and desk chairs littering the debris-covered floor below. Almost instinctively the Doctor's eyes were drawn to the breach control lever on the right side of the room; all the floor around it had collapsed, and the lever had snapped off in the blast, but the generator remained, hanging almost mockingly in place by a couple of bolts and some heavy cables. As he stared at it, he could hear Caldwell and Jack talking, but at first he couldn't fully attend to their words.

Then he forced himself to look away, and noticed that Caldwell was pointing down to the floor below, where they could see two other ATOs with long tape measures gingerly making their way across the debris.

"…been trying to calculate the epicenter of the first explosion, based on the placement of the debris and these shards of yours."

"So it was definitely a lateral explosion?" Jack said.

Caldwell unfolded the paper to reveal a blueprint of the floor. There were dozens of little 'x' marks all over it.

"We spent the first hour marking the locations of these pieces you believe appeared here after the explosion," Caldwell explained. "But look at their placement." He pointed at a white line near the east side of the tower. "That's the breach wall there," he said. "Now look at the markings. The red marks are the Dalek and Cyberman pieces we've found, yellow are other pieces of debris. We've been able to calculate a blast pattern that indicates a lateral blast wave, moving eastwards, but where it originated is harder to determine." He pointed outwards. "Initially we assumed that the breach wall itself was at the epicenter, except first of all, it seems untouched, and secondly, the distance at which UNIT staff have found Dalek pieces would suggest differently."

"How so?" asked Jack.

"To put it simply, the placement of the pieces in the building might be consistent with a small-to-medium explosion, I'd estimate equal to ten to fifty kilograms of TNT," Caldwell answered.

"Yeah, that's what we saw on the footage," Jack said.

Caldwell nodded. "But the pieces scattered all over Canary Wharf and the surrounding area suggest otherwise," he said. "I know what you said about appearing in this world without coordinates, but all of the pieces are in a blast pattern, those in the plaza included. The distance at which we found pieces would be more consistent with a much larger and hotter explosion than what we saw… and if the epicenter of such an explosion was at the breach wall, then there probably wouldn't be a fiftieth floor at all." He shook his head, but looked very fascinated. "It's brilliant, even if it makes no sense to me."

"Hold on," Jack cut across him. "You say it was an eastward lateral explosion, but it looked more south-east in the footage. And a diagonal pattern, because it looked like it was coming from the 48th or 49th floors, which is why Mace was skeptical when I told him it likely had something to do with the breach wall."

"Well, that would have been the second explosion," Caldwell said matter-of-factly.

"Second?" the Doctor asked suddenly, raising his eyebrows.

"There were two," explained Caldwell. "But they were close together and a split second apart. That's why it resembled one larger explosion. Unlike the first, we've found the epicenter of the second, and we believe this to have been the cause."

He took his phone from a pouch strapped to his leg and showed them a photograph. The Doctor and Jack leaned closer and saw what he guessed to be a laboratory, although it was in no state for use. Plaster, wires, insulation, and even a steel beam from the tower's framework had fallen out, as though there had been an earthquake. The metal tables had been completely cleared, and the counters at the side of the room were covered with broken glass and melted plastic. The entire room looked blackened from the fire. Caldwell brought up the next photo, where they could more clearly see a circular blast pattern with one of the tables in the middle. The next photo showed what looked like a metal and glass cylinder embedded in a wall, while the next showed an item on the charred floor that could only be the other half of the cylinder, though it had clearly been blasted open. Caldwell likely had no idea what it was, but the Doctor recognized it instantly.

Evidently Jack did too. "Anaxian power core," he declared. At Caldwell's puzzled expression, he added, "It's used to power their D-class single-pilot fighters."

"They must have kept them well protected then, if they're that explosive," remarked Caldwell.

"Not necessarily," said the Doctor. "A lot of Anax fighters are cheaply made."

"They tend to be pirates, not military," explained Jack. "They therefore often use what they can. I've seen these things before, and believe me, if you shot an Anaxian pirate's warbird in just the right spot, then adios muchachos. If you hit one of these with a strong enough force, it definitely could explode."

This obviously meant nothing to Caldwell, but after a moment he simply remarked, "That explains that, then. The breach explosion went first and it immediately set off this power core. Anyway, that's what we've been able to piece together." The ATO shifted his gaze to the breach wall opposite their ledge. "But as for the breach itself, apart from mapping the blast wave I have no idea how to approach this."

"It's a good thing you've got me, then," the Doctor said. He too turned and looked at the breach wall contemplatively. As it always had, it had the innocent look of a blank white wall, eerily untouched by the explosion. Its appearance gave no hint of the presence of a dangerous, potentially planet-destroying gateway into the Void. "You're confused about the location of the epicenter of the first blast?" At Caldwell's nod, he continued, "I think that's because you can't see it. We examined the remains of one of the Cybermen and found its head and arm to be misshapen, likely by intense heat. Now even normal steel will start to soften at around four hundred and twenty-five degrees centigrade, but for the Cyberman to be as misshapen as we found, its exoskeleton would have had to be closer to forging temperature."

Caldwell raised his eyebrows. "I know steel. That's well over a thousand degrees."

"A thousand, one hundred and fifty, more like," the Doctor corrected him. "I suppose it's possible that part of the warping was a result of the blast, but even so, I suspect that immediately after the explosion the Cyberman's armor was somewhere between those two temperatures." He looked back at Caldwell and Jack. "A temperature that high, and an explosive yield powerful enough to send debris all over Canary Wharf and the surrounding area? Yet only a moderate explosion appeared on camera." Smiling grimly, he finished, "If I'm right, the epicenter of this explosion is on the other side of that wall."

Jack looked at the breach wall sharply, the blank plaster wall curiously untouched by the fire or blast, then back at the Doctor, understanding his. "You think the explosion originated from _within_ the Void?"

The Doctor nodded. "I'll need more precise data, but I think you only caught a draft of the actual blast." He too looked back at the breach wall. "None of it makes sense if we're continue to assume that the blast was caused by this new spheroid emerging from the Void." He folded his arms and frowned at the wall, squinting, too searching for any sign either of damage or any other visible effects from the breach, but there was nothing. "Perhaps it _was_ the cause," he said after a moment. "Perhaps the explosion was caused by the spheroid rocketing itself through the breach forcefully, except neither the Daleks nor the Cybermen needed to come out so violently."

"Yes, but that was because Torchwood had opened the breach," said Caldwell. "At least, that's what they told me when they briefed me on this."

But the Doctor shook his head. "I don't think the Daleks needed human help. Torchwood only accelerated the process. The Time Lords could travel across parallel worlds but they never figured out actually entering the Void and moving around in it. I don't understand what's happening here, but I do know that there's no such thing as creation ex nihilo. This thing emerged from the Void, but it wasn't borne of the Void. If it could enter the Void, it could also exit, and like the Daleks' ship, it probably didn't need an explosion to do so."

"But you say the explosion originated from somewhere inside the Void," Jack said, "but if it wasn't the spheroid emerging from the breach that set off the explosion, and if these Void ships don't need that kind of force to appear in this world, then what caused the explosion? Because it's as you said. Neither matter nor energy appear out of nowhere. Something caused the explosion."

The Doctor nodded, deep in thought.

 _Nothing appears from nothing. When something actually does seem to appear ex nihilo, in reality there always was something else there, unseen. The breach is a weak spot. And something found that weak spot. Something screaming for release._

And almost instinctively, the Doctor's gaze was drawn back to the generator at the side of the room. If only he had taken the right lever rather than the left.

* * *

(1) Sauron, _The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring_ (film)

* * *

 _A/N: I'm sorry about the delay. I hated my first few attempts at this segment of the story, and there was no way I was going to post it then. After a few frustrating weeks I took a break, which I think I needed to refresh my thoughts. Now that I've come up with a chapter I'm happier with, here it is._

 _I'm not sure when my next chapter's going up (it and a few of the following chapters are going to require some research on computer programming, a skill I've never been any good at), but I hope to at least have something ready by Christmas or New Years._


End file.
